Another editorial by The Detroit Free Press:
Parks, pools and public libraries could become unaffordable luxuries without state help. As I wrote a few months ago (
Example of how government metastasizes: Troy, MI): One mechanism bureaucrats use to metastasize government is to peel off essential services and dare taxpayers not to fund them at the ballot box. Police and fire departments have their own millage rates, peeled off so that the central city government can grow but claim they are doing no such thing. This is
how it works: say your city is whatever size it is - 100%. They peel off 10% of their budget in
the form of an essential public service like Fire or Police protection which now becomes it's own separate entity on paper and on ballots. Meanwhile the city that should be 90% grows to 98% and claims a 2% cut while it really grew 8%. If you add the 98% city and the 10% service, the taxpayer is on the hook for 108% as city bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for right-sizing government. It's a shell game designed to both grow the government and hurt people if that's not possible. Meanwhile unsustainable union benefits like free lifetime healthcare and generous pensions allowing government workers to retire in their late 40's aren't touched at all. And the freep is either oblivious to the shell game, or fully supports it (and believe you me it's the latter):
Everyone should applaud the Friends of the Romulus Library, whose fund-raising efforts reopened the local public library after it closed on May 1 due to a millage defeat. Their work demonstrates what engaged private citizens can do when cities fail to provide needed public services. Elsewhere in southeast Michigan, other citizens groups have also stepped up and provided money and volunteers to restore programs for seniors and others.
But charity and goodwill cannot replace the public sector's central role in repairing roads, maintaining public safety, keeping up parks, operating public libraries and schools, and providing the myriad of other services taxpayers now expect.
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| The govt hard at work |
Problem is, many of these entities have become lifestyle management government businesses that serve government employees, not the end users. The freep apparently has no problem with that as per the tone for the editorial. When public employees are on a defined contribution plan, and the taxpayers are not on the hook for paying them when they no longer work for the taxpayer, then they can make their case. Otherwise, they're just crying me a river. A revealing few snippets further in the article:
Libraries, property inspection, parks, swimming pools and recreation, as well as youth and senior programs, are among the first services to face elimination.
You'll note that union benefits don't even come into the freep's narrow focus here.
...Thanks to the Friends of the Romulus Library, one local library has enough money now to stay open the rest of the year. Although that is admirable, such private efforts do not offer a long-term fix for Michigan's municipal funding crisis. Politicians must find one before they are forced to eliminate services that make living in their communities worthwhile.
Two things: 1) the municipalities have put themselves into this situation by catering to unions that helped elect said politicians in a vicious cycle of bilking the taxpayers that are excluded from either side of the negotiating table, and 2) politicians have come up with a solution - getting rid of unsustainable union benefits. The freep is against those necessary cutbacks. Natch.
