When local government officials mention a lack of funding – such as the consequences of last year’s property tax “reform” – there’s always an immediate outcry from many in the community.
“They need to learn to stay within their budgets! After all, we have to!”
And they do. They’re legally required to stay within their budgets, and state regulators make sure they do by auditing them at least every couple years – a more in-depth audit than what private-sector companies undergo. (Those audit reports are available on the state’s website, by the way.) Overspending their means is not the current problem.
Part of the problem is that the cost of delivering the services you demand at the level of quality you expect is becoming significantly more expensive. In fact, it’s gone up at a faster rate than the inflation you get angry about every time you go grocery shopping. Think the last car you bought was pricey? School buses run about $170,000 these days. Fire trucks are often more than a million dollars. Local government uses a lot more fuel than you do, too. Trail construction typically runs more than a million dollars per mile, and roads are much pricier than that (even though the low bidder gets the project). People cost a lot more, too – because local governments can’t hire or keep the top-quality police officers, firefighters, and other public servants you expect to be there for your needs if they can’t provide a living wage.
The other part is that the state’s “reforms” have cut the funding local governments receive to deliver those services you demand. It would be like your boss calling you in to announce that your paycheck was going to be cut by ten percent. How would that affect your family’s finances? Sure, you could probably get by, but you’d have to do away with a lot of the things you enjoy or prefer. Vacation might have to be in southern Indiana instead of Disney, and you’d probably be eating a lot more spaghetti and the like instead of dining out. Since you can cut back, why shouldn’t they?
You’re the reason. You don’t want to give up anything local government does for you. If your spouse suffers a stroke, you expect paramedics to be at your door within a couple minutes of calling 911. When three inches of snow falls, you expect an army of plows and salt trucks to make your streets passable right away. You expect your kids’ schools and buses to be well-maintained. When those kids are at the playground, you expect everything to be clean and safe, and you expect that park to be just as nice as the ones in the next town.
But when local government’s funding gets cut, it’s not going to be able to do all those things at the levels you’ve come to expect. All those things cost money, and if government is getting less of that, they won’t be able to continue the same way. So they may have to eliminate one of their ambulances. Maybe they’ll wait to plow until at least six inches of snow comes down. Could be the custodians at your kids’ schools will start cleaning classrooms only every other day. And instead of mowing the park every week, they’ll stretch it out to every two.
By the way, your local governments aren’t allowed to make profits. In fact, local governments are one of several types of non-profit organizations. The only way they can spend extra is if there’s an emergency need and they don’t have enough funds on hand, and that involves a public process.
This isn’t a complicated concept or twisting any facts. If it takes local government $10 million a year to deliver the services you demand at the level you expect, and their funding gets cut back to $9 million, there’s no way they’ll be able to keep meeting all your expectations. These things cost what they cost. You may not like what the supermarket is charging, but you either pay it or you don’t eat.
One last point: people frequently point to local government employees as the best place to cut costs because they claim that local government has bloated payrolls, with all sorts of folks getting paid a lot of money and not doing anything to earn it. Investigate and you’ll find that’s clearly not the case. Nearly every part of local government is staffed thinly compared to most private-sector companies, and local government employees typically receive lower-than-private sector pay, too.