The research reported here addresses the impact of school district consolidation on constituent support of educational expenditures. It is hypothesized that, regardless of the success of consolidation in satisfying its stated objective of providing a qualitatively improved education more efficiently, the loss of local control will, under certain circumstances, lead to a decrease in support for educational services. This is in large part the case because short-term losses will be perceived to outweigh long-range goals. In order to investigate the impact of school district consolidation on the support given for educational expenditures, two analytic strategies are adopted: (1) a cross-sectional analysis of negative voting in school budget elections for unified and nonunified school districts of Oregon during 1971-72, and (2) a quasi-experimental time series analysis of negative voting in one Oregon school district during the years 1957-72. If a negative impact on school budget elections is to be avoided, forced consolidation should either be abandoned or combined with legislation to have state government assume responsibility for the funding of education. However, forced consolidation leads to more than the lamentable passing of an anachronistic administrative unit; it represents a basic alteration in a form of self-government. (Author/IRT)