Here’s an amazingly wonderful contribution to the discussion of the “no new taxes” view of the world, stemming from a battle several years ago over funding for the community library in Troy, Michigan.
It has nothing to do with Iselle or Julio, the storms bearing down on the state.
A professor at Penn State described the situation for his students in a class on Rhetoric and Civic Life.
The gist of the story is that the Troy library went through a period of financial difficulty. To counteract the difficult times, the city called for a vote for a slight increase in taxes to support the library. Unfortunately, the Tea Party movement in Troy protested the tax increase. The civic conversation turned from a focus on saving the library to a discussion about taxes. In order to both bring the conversation back to the topic of saving the library and point out the absurdity of stubbornness to increase taxes, a group of activists in Troy began campaigning for the closing of the library with a complimentary book-burning party. The group placed signs around the town, made a Facebook page, and started selling products promoting the project. People were outraged as the movement gained national attention. Thousands posted nasty comments online about the indecency of a book burning party and the irresponsibility of voting to close the library. Of course, this public response was the whole point of the campaign. After drumming up sufficient conversation on the project, the actual intent of the project was revealed. The slogan used to describe the purpose was “A vote against the library is like a vote to burn books.” The result was that three times as many people came to vote in favor of the library as projected. Thus, the library was saved and restored to its former glory.
This video tells the story. It’s really instructive!
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What a silly bit of demagoguery that campaign was to raise taxes to pay for the Troy library. The only people who ever proposed to knock down the library and burn the books were the people who wanted to raise taxes to “save” the library. This is the sort of thing lefties love to do: “If we don’t raise taxes, we’ll need to cut the Fire Department, the Police Department, the schools, etc.” Nonsense! In reality what’s needed is a good administrator who can set priorities and keep necessary public services while cutting unnecessary expenses. I think (hope!) people today are too smart to fall for such scare tactics.
Reading the comment above I am reminded of what George Orwell said about Lord Halifax: “Atrocities happened even though Lord Halifax said they did”. Well, the comment above is true even though Ken Conklin says it is. Governing requires that choices be made and those choices are governed by how much money is to be extracted from the citizenry. This does mean that government has a huge responsibility to be effective (doing the right things) and efficient (doing things right). We can’t afford to do all the right things, and we certainly can’t afford to do them if money is wasted. Years ago the State of Oregon, in an effort to control medical costs, drew up a prioritized list of procedures which would qualify for reimbursement. We could create a similar list for governmental services. Mine would start with police and fire and move quickly to libraries and education. It would not include corporate welfare, public information officers, or the political science department at the University.
What a silly demagogue that Ken Conklin is with his campaign to avoid ever raising taxes by claiming that “reality” is that there are lots of unnecessry expenses that can be cut to meet the cost of keeping up with inflation, making up for stealing from the pension plans, attracting expert talent to work at lower than market rates, or meeting new emerging threats or opportunities.
In the reality that I inhabit, politicians, fearful of people like Ken, have cut expenses and resisted raises, held off new hires, eliminated positions, and cut services. At times, we have operated at 30% vacancies with workers burning out as a result. If you have stood in line for a drivers test, you were one of those who was affected by this belief that there is a lot of spare change in the couch.
Doing more with less is the new mantra but unfortunately, most often the result is that with less usually you get less but you don’t know where they are stealing from to make it look like you are getting more.
If you can’t fire the drones, you can’t empower the qualified and competent or pay them what they’re worth. I could cite any number of examples of government employees who are hard working, dedicated, and successful at their jobs. But they are basically self-motivated because they have little incentive from the system to perform at a high level. If there are vacancies in important jobs, then they should be filled by using money made available by getting rid of people who are doing work that is redundant, superfluous or no longer a priority. The driver’s license workers are a classic example of what could be achieved if customer service were a government value. There should never be vacancies in that area. Similarly, the tax office should be staffed at full levels and given the best technology available to efficiently and rapidly collect revenue from a tax system that is a model of simplicity and comprehensibility. The general excise tax is a perfect example of what to do. Taxing gross income gets the government out of endless arguments over what net income is, and you don’t need as many people to run it well. Why shouldn’t the state’s personal and corporate income taxes be placed on the same basis: total your gross income and pay a percentage. This removes the legislature and governor from excessive involvement in the local economy and happily also removes many incentives to lobby and practice legal corruption.
As the below link shows, it’s not just vacant positions that create long lines to take the drivers test. A major cause of the slowdown in service is due to inordinately high absenteeism among the examiners who are on the payroll.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/25436545/city-investigates-possible-sick-leave-abuse-by-road-test-examiners
So easy to think that filling vacancies and throwing money at the problem will solve everything. But what if those new workers take their cue from the vets, and likewise try to milk their sick leave? It’s a problem that also rears it’s ugly head in the state corrections dept., causing numerous visitation days at prisons to be cancelled. Rather than throwing money in an inefficient way, wouldn’t it make so much more sense for the state to get tough with union bargaining and instituting rules designed to reduce/discourage sick leave abuse? Wouldn’t it makes sense for the state to get more bang for its buck trying to find ways to be more efficient and get more out of very dollar that’s spent?
But of course, those kinds of rules and regulations would, gasp!!! It would make the unions unhappy! Horror of horrors, we can’t have that, can we? Nope, we’re going to make everyone happy, give everyone with a hand out for public funding whatever their hearts desire, and we’re going to do it whatever it takes. Raise taxes, create new taxes, borrow money, issue more bonds,…. Let’s enjoy what we can today, and let out children pay for it.
Now THAT’S progressive thinking, for ya!