“Reduce overhead!” “Cut administrative costs!”

It’s hard to find anyone who is against cutting costs — especially in the current economy, and especially when the cuts are the vague kind that involve papers getting pushed around. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the idea of regionalization — combining municipal services like fire, police, or schools — is taking on a special allure. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue sponsored a conference on the topic earlier in the month; DOR spokesman Bob Bliss said the sessions on police/fire regionalization were standing-room-only.

But Tom Dubas, a former Pennsylvania police chief who spoke at the conference, says sharing is not a quick budget fix.

“If you’re only regionalizing to save money, you’re going to fail,” he predicts. Dubas, who has consulted on regionalization in Pennsylvania for 20 years, says that municipalities that focus on savings typically don’t spend enough time getting citizens, and police officers, to support the idea — and often overlook cultural differences, or even geographic obstacles, that may make regionalizing impossible.

He urges Bay State communities to focus on whether combining police departments will yield better service, like improved communication about crime between neighboring towns, or the ability to add officers during higher-crime times of day in way very small departments can’t. If regionalization makes sense for those reasons, he says, then savings will follow — but not immediately. (The first year is all about spending on things like new names on the police cars and new uniforms.) But within five years, according to Dubas, Pennsylvania’s new regional departments have averaged 24 percent in savings.