Thursday’s session on government restructuring had one big omission: no public official was on the panel.

No current mayor, city manager, township supervisor, state lawmaker or county administrator was at the table to tell the audience about the difficulty of running a government unit, the feasibility of consolidating services or the probability of merging with another unit of government.

Each of those strategies were key points discussed by other panelists — Phil Power of The Center for Michigan, Michael Shea of Government Strategies L.L.C., and Louis Schimmel of Municipal Financial Consultants — during a two-hour session that was moderated by former Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema.

Plenty of local public officials attended the session.

Based on the panel discussion, audience members using hand-held voting devices chose five changes needed to return the state and the region to the right track.

1. Remove barriers and create rewards for local governments to consolidate services. State barriers include laws that require the highest established pay scale to be enacted when services are consolidated and Public Act 312 of 1969 that calls for binding arbitration when a government employer reaches a labor impasse with public safety employees, such as police and fire.

2. Repeal and/or modify the state term-limits statute

3. Elect only honest, courageous and visionary leaders to state and local government posts.

4. Set a benchmark for public pay and benefits packages.

5. Eliminate the Michigan Business Tax and cut state spending.

“If we keep doing what we’ve done, we will keep getting what we got,” said Power, who paraphrased former General Motors Corp. CEO Roger Smith.