Posted on 08/03/2004 9:02:18 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
A FEE FRENZY HAS BEEN building in California, and with last week's passage of a state budget that requires local governments to give back $2.6 billion over the next two years, things are just getting worse.
In the future, San Francisco residents may pay an extra $700 to cremate the remains of loved ones. San Diego nightclub bouncers may have to pay $152 for permits. Some cities are considering flat fees for fire services. Other ideas in the pipeline throughout the state call for fees for burglar alarms and phone service to fund 9-1-1 systems.
One city even thought about charging a fee for leaving cut flowers at cemeteries.
It's hard not to sympathize with municipal officials struggling to balance budgets in a sluggish economy. But budget analysts have long grumbled that applying annual, short-term solutions to systemic problems is the wrong way to go, leading to local budgets that are ever more reliant on new revenues and creating little incentive to find a better way of doing business.
The danger is that governments, whether local, state or national, will quickly incorporate any short-term revenues, "temporary" taxes or emergency fee hikes into their way of doing business. In San Mateo County, for example, cities will receive a huge payout of $338 million for road upkeep if a half-cent county sales tax extension, Measure A, passes in November. Never mind that, historically, cities and not counties are responsible for road maintenance. Cities in San Mateo County have been getting the county cash since the late-1980s, and any suggestion that they might have to go back to paying their own way would be met by howls of protest by mayors and council members.
An even more egregious example of spend-it-as-it-comes financing occurred in San Francisco throughout the 1980s and '90s, when the Board of Supervisors greedily "redirected" millions of dollars in Hetch Hetchy revenues into local services. It worked nicely for the politicians, allowing them to crow about the local services they were preserving. But the bill has come due. The local Public Utilities Commission has grand plans to rebuild the Hetch Hetchy water-delivery system, and they will come to the taxpayers for the hundreds of millions of dollars to do it -- money that by all rights should have been socked away from the excess revenues over the last twenty years, had the Board of Supervisors created responsible budgets.
City budget officials who come up with "creative" new revenue streams will grumble that their hands are tied and that they had no choice but to raise fees for flowers at graveyards. That's only partially true. Municipal officials must do a better job of planning for the future and not squandering funds only to be left empty-pocketed when the downturns hit. That's why we elect them, after all.
They still don't get it. They have to budget within their means. This state has imported "POVERTY". Begs for more of them, then cries the blues when there is no money.
The golden state has been severely tarnished.
Good post. I hope Californians are seeing it.
Yeah, I'm seeing it, and living it every day, thanks.
I'm still looking for that "sluggish economy" though. I am spending more time in checkout lines now than I ever thought possible.
Some "sluggish economy", I'd hate to see how long I'd be waiting if the economy "picks up". (sarcasm off)
Cheers!
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