Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Budget crunch arrives: Some politicians are in fiscal denial

By CAL BEVERLY
editor@thecitizennews.com

Local governing officials, city and county, are just now waking up to their own official stock market crashes. The dot-com bubble that decimated millions of private portfolios has now worked its way down to affecting taxes.

Governments from federal down to small Fayette cities suddenly are no longer awash in taxation income. It's a rude awakening, and officials are scrambling to adjust to the tension caused by the gap between high voter expectations and lowered revenues.

Many are doing stupid things to try to keep nonessential services up to pre-crash levels.

Cases in point: the hapless Fayette County Board of Education, the schizophrenic Peachtree City Council, the Cheshire-cat-smiling Fayetteville City Council and the secretive Fayette County Commission (maybe).

First, a lesson in plain facts: the taxman's days of wine and roses are ended. For the first time in many a moon, local governments are facing actual deficits, and they have no experience with that phenomenon that faces most Fayette taxpayers every two weeks or so.

What do Fayette families do when faced with outgo exceeding income? Most wisely rein in their expectations and make do within their means. Having less, they spend less.

What do some Fayette governing entities do? They flail about and engage in unsafe fiscal affairs. They cannot accept that services must match up with available income.

And some lose sight of their primary functions.

The school board and central office wheels botched the school bus decision by forgetting who their customers are. They failed to give adequate notice of major changes in bus routes, and they compounded it by sliding in the decision under cover of dry budget hearings. They claimed to have sent out notification letters to all affected parents, but precious few parents ever got such an alleged letter.

This after the board unwisely voted to sign contracts to construct a high school fine arts building even though there's no money in the budget for their decision.

The board has its spending priorities out of whack. Six-year-olds forced to walk from their neighborhoods in the dark to stand beside busy major roads to await a school bus? And central office wheels not coming up with bus route schedules until the Friday before the first Monday bus run? This from the local government that takes most of our property taxes.

Parents are understandably angry.

Now the Peachtree City Council: I'm just about ready to give up on this bunch. They want to double city court fines to bail themselves out of a declining revenue situation? Are they crazy? The police department as an unabashed out-front revenue generator? There would be no better way to drain public support for an otherwise good police department than this foolish idea.

Grow up, Peachtree City. You've fed at the developers' teat too long. The development fee trough is nearly empty. Sales tax revenues are down because sales are down. Reality must arrive. You can't afford some of the things you've gotten used to enjoying.

I repeat: You cannot afford some of things you've gotten accustomed to being provided at low or no charge.

From tennis centers to ballfields, you're going to have to tighten your belt. Focus on government's reason for existence: Public safety, basic services (reliable roads, working traffic controls, etc.), access to reliable utilities and a reasonable business climate. Essentials versus nonessentials.

If you want nonessentials, be prepared to pay extra for those specific added services that you use. Whatever nonessential services cost must be borne by those who use those nonessential services. And don't give this Peachtree Citian that lame argument about maintaining the "Peachtree City lifestyle." That's like putting expensive drapes on windows to hide the empty rooms within.

This also is called fiscal responsibility. And in a majority Republican county, why on earth should that have to be spelled out?

The annex-to-the-horizon Fayetteville Council: Ah, what can I say about these guys? Everytime they smile, another 40 acres of county land gets gobbled up for increased density and commercial developments. They've become the latest local government to snub the taxpaying voters and decide to go into deep debt for a new public building. Peachtree City did it several years ago, Fayette County did it and now Fayetteville is jumping on the unaccountable bandwagon.

Once upon a golden time, local governments had to come hat in hand before local voters and ask voters' permission to go into debt and obligate those taxpayers to long-term repayments. Sometimes voters said no, and this angered the politicians and bureaucrats who wanted their new buildings. So conniving with the state legislature, they came up with a voter-avoidance debt scheme: "Bricks and Mortar" or some such fancy name.

Without any voter getting a say, the pols can float millions upon millions of dollars in public debt to build whatever and whenever they like. And that's what Fayetteville just did with its $5.25 million new cop and court headquarters.

That's debt that Fayetteville taxpayers are obligated to repay, and they never got a say in that decision. That ain't right, no matter how legal it may be. And then we wonder why local governments keep needing more and more tax money even though services don't keep getting better and better.

Two members of the council are running for reelection this year. Ask them if they have any more similar surprises in store for us left-out-but-left-with-the-bill taxpayers.

And Fayette County may have its own stealth "revenue enhancement" scheme afoot. There are some who think that the county commission may be trying to sneak in their own back-door police force to make arrests across Fayette and raise revenue for county coffers.

Recall that we already pay millions for a very competent sheriff's department to patrol the roads, deter crime and catch lawbreakers.

The marshal's office has been rebadged under an unpublicized realignment and now comes under a new county "department of public safety." State law requires a voter referendum before a county commission can create its own police force apart from the sheriff's department. So what is the Fayette Commission trying to do with this ever-so low-key "realignment"?

Already, we hear, zealous marshals, eager to raise revenue, have been ticketing citizens' vehicles parked at county recreation fields. The charge? Tires touching the white parking lines. Each white-line "touch" costs more than $60. And this in a Republican county! And you see county marshal's trucks making traffic stops along many of Fayette's byways these days.

And we hear that questions are being raised about whether the marshals have the necessary statutory authority to make traffic arrests, possibly imperiling some state court cases.

What are Chairman Greg Dunn and his fellow "conservatives" on the commission up to? Don't they know that piling on more layers of government, even those wearing police uniforms, won't advance anyone's political ambitions in a Republican county?

From the school board to county commission to city councils, we've got a lot of folks holding office in Fayette County, many of whom have a big "R" beside their ballot names, but you can't tell much difference in their local taxing philosophy from your average national grab-and-spend Democrat.