Many people don’t realize there’s a profound difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is when you’ve never had access to a particular piece of knowledge, so you’re not to blame for not knowing it. But stupidity … that’s when you do (or should) know better, so you make yourself look like a complete idiot.
Take the local lady who not long ago posted the most stupid thing I’ve ever read about local government … and folks, that’s saying a lot. A new subdivision had been proposed, and a Facebook chatter group was losing its collective mind. Within a particularly angry thread about the elected officials who everyone just knew were secretly behind the plans, this woman chose to proclaim, “They’re going to build lots of schools just so they can raise our taxes.”
Wait. What? What?! You think your local elected officials have conspired to allow an overabundance of housing as part of their plan to force the building of more schools … with the ultimate goal of making you pay higher taxes? For now, let’s ignore the central flaw in your argument: the people who make the decisions about development have little or nothing to do with decisions about building schools. They’re in completely different parts of local government.
I’ve met hundreds of elected officials over the years and have worked closely with many of them in different ways and situations. I’m completely comfortable stating that I don’t know any who take even the slightest delight out of raising taxes when that becomes necessary. In fact, most will tell you that having to increase taxes is one of hardest parts of being an elected official – and not just because your friends and neighbors can get pretty rude and even hostile about it. I have never met an elected official who becomes gleeful at digging more deeply into their neighbors’ pockets. Not one. Nada.
Want an obvious reason elected officials hate to raise taxes? They have to pay them, too. You may think the local school board members are just being greedy with other people’s money when they ask you to help them fund a referendum, but they’re going to have to fork over a lot of their own hard-earned dollars, too. They may not be living on a fixed income, but that doesn’t mean they have an unlimited income. (And before you point to their outrageous salaries, know that Indiana law long set school board salaries at $2,000 per year.)
Another reason elected officials lose sleep over tax increases? They don’t want to make you and your neighbors unhappy. They probably didn’t earn your vote by promising to make you pay more in local taxes. They may have even told your that their goal was to cut your taxes. It’s easy to make promises like that before you fully understand how public funding works and just how difficult it is to trim. There’s nowhere near as much fat as the average taxpayer assumes. (Don’t believe me? Go get elected to office. After a couple months, I’ll expect a beer as an apology for doubting me.)
Sometimes taxes have to go up. The same inflation that’s been frustrating you in recent years also affects all of your local governments. When your electric bill goes up, so does theirs. Like you, their employees appreciated receiving a raise this year. Now someone has to pay for it. Maybe the folks in the Statehouse or on Capitol Hill have come up with another unfunded mandate that’s going to force them to stretch their budget even further.
But raising taxes isn’t some kind of evil goal or bizarre game for local elected officials, no matter how many folks like that woman actually buy into that kind of idiotic and illogical nonsense.