Last week in Albany, yet another commission released yet another report on government reform. I had looked forward to this one, hoping it would contain some bold ideas - and some spark. Some kind of urgent call to action.

With a few exceptions, it doesn't.

New York taxes are some of the highest in the nation, and one of the reasons is the cost of local government: paying for our 1607 counties, cities, towns, and villages. Former Governor Eliot Spitzer had appointed the commission to look for ways to streamline the mess: reduce the cost and make local governments operate better. Some of the studies done during the commission's work emphasized that we could save a lot by consolidating some services - and some governments. But the report doesn't call for major moves in that direction. Instead, it simply urges the state to remove barriers and to find ways to make consolidation attractive.

These are very baby steps. And I wonder whether we'll ever take even those.

Still, for those of us who favor some form of metropolitan government, the report offers a glimmer of hope.

Not all politicians oppose consolidation. In fact, some want it. The Town of Clay and Onondaga County plan to consolidate police and sheriff's forces. The City and Town of Batavia want to study a merger. New York's constitution and laws throw up a lot of barriers to consolidation, however. If the state gets rid of the barriers it can remove easily, and if it helps governments that want to consolidate, a few more local governments might move forward.

And they can show the rest of us that it can be done without the sky falling.

I'm being harder on the report than perhaps I should be. It does contain some strong recommendations. Commission members want to replace county jails with regional jails, serving multiple counties. They want tax assessing and collection done at the county level. They want civil service functions administered regionally.

And in one of their strongest recommendations, they want the state education commissioner to be able to order school districts to consolidate. While they mention that consolidation could be particularly good for districts with very small enrollments, they also note that many states have countywide school districts. And they want state school aid to contain "a significant incentive" for school districts to consolidate.

They recommend regional collective bargaining for school districts, to reduce the cost of negotiations and to eliminate the differences in salaries and benefits within neighboring school districts.

They want the state to review the way it pays for building and repairing local streets and highways, to find ways to discourage suburban sprawl.

Most of these will meet with a lot of resistance. So will two others:

• Requiring employees of local governments and school districts to contribute at least 10 percent of their health-insurance costs.
• Reducing pension benefits for future government employees.

Former Mayor Bill Johnson - whose interest in metro government probably cost him the county-executive race - was a member of the commission. And Johnson says he's happy with the report. While he says he began his work on the commission with an "idealistic position: consolidation now and forever," he eventually backed off. Too many forces would fight a heavy consolidation push, he said last week, and the commission needed to find a way to at least get things started.

Johnson's hope is that the state can create an environment where people realize that we can't afford our system of multiple, overlapping local governments - "however much they romanticize it."

"Overall," he said, "this report made an important statement." But resisting the opposition will require an intensive grassroots campaign, and it will require strong leadership. Governor Paterson "has got to be willing to put some of his own capital behind this," he said.

"Without the follow-up," said Johnson, "this is nothing. This is garbage."

We shall see.