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Aug

14

Reality of Budgets

August 14, 2005 |

The nice thing about small community municipal governments is that the politicians can’t force their inability to balance a budget onto the next generation by saddling the community with debt. So, in Union Township, where the budget has been a problem for some time, it was budget cutting time… Hence, Union Township chalks itself up as another little town loses its police force.

Of course, for some time the community leaders attempted to reduce their spending on police. But that was not allowed: the Police Union would not tolerate it, and the courts sided with them each time — not surprising giving the lopsided laws that favor Unions at the expense of employers — and especially those that are government employers.

So, instead, after lots of politics, the leadership finally decided it had no choice but to scrap the entire police department. That absolved them of union restrictions.

I am left to wonder, in the end, what else could have been cut instead that would not scare the locals so much. That’s because often times politicians take it out on the voters when the voters finally say “no more taxes”…. That leaves the politician with one solution: cuts. No politician ever likes to cut anything, since that will always rile some group on the other end of the cut. So rather than cutting true fat, the politician strikes back by cutting that which will scare the voter the most — the police or fire. The idea is that the voters will then run back scared, ready to pay more taxes.

They should not. Instead, they should force more cuts on their governments, and rid themselves of overly expensive contracts, labor or otherwise.

Pittsburgh would be much better off if it wasn’t able to use debt. Cuts would have started earlier, and the bloat than now strangles the city would be getting reduce vs. being placed on life support. But it should be noted that it was THE FREE MARKET that cut off the debt to Pittsburgh by reducing its bond status to that of JUNK bonds… With that, the city was one step closer to taking its fiscal stupidity more seriously, even if voters would be so silly as to allow themselves to be saddled further and further in debt with reckless spending.

Just the same, Mayor Murphy took the bold steps to cut the parks programs, closing pools. Rather than addressing the most expensive fire and police departments in the country, where real money could be saved, he fritters on the edges with pool closing…. Not that pool goers deserve free pools at the expense of their neighbors… but, its time for real cuts.


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