The Natural Cycle – Depression on a budget

It is a little known fact, in the United States of America, that a money crisis happens at regular intervals.  Every eight years a major downturn forces governments to wring their hands and howl.  Howling about how they do not have enough money and need to raise taxes.

As a participant in the process of government you need to consider some things. When economic times get tough and money becomes tight, people will not vote to increase taxes.   What then can be done to insure that services can continue? 

A few polices could increase the perception of good governance.  While, at the same time making the income your city, town, county, or state go as far as it can go.

1. Money not spent on projects become part of the next years budget, called a carryover, this will prevent governmental employees from a buying binge at the last minute.
2. Provide a budget to the public that has a narrative, an explanation, of where all of the money comes from and exactly where, what it is spent on.  Include an employee schedule; People have the right to know exactly where their money goes.
3. After contracts have been negotiated, do not change them.  Changing a contract for a project can raise the cost by triple.  Look no further than the Tram in Portland Oregon.
4. Do not pay any government employee more than twice of what the average wage in is your area is.  You will need to do a wage study of the private sector and every five years update it.  However a government employee should not be receiving a hundred thousand dollars a year in compensation, if the average wage in the private sector is fourty thousand dollars a year.
5. Get away form a biannual budget.  Every government in the Unites States of America that uses a biannual budget has massive budget issues.
6. Inform employee unions that in automatic downturns, salaries will be frozen.  There are people that you want to have vote for a raise in taxes that haven’t received a raise in three or more years.  Why, then should government employees be given automatic raises?
7. Buy a year of office supplies all at once.  Determine how much paper is used and buy it all at once.  Inform the employees that when this is gone there is no more until the coming year.  Three hole punched paper costs no more than paper with out the holes, so consider that as well.  Also consider going paperless but remember, laptops can be laid around carelessly and cost more than paper.

This is not an exhaustive list but if put into place, and followed, the voter will be more receptive in raising taxes.  After all you are looking out for their money.

 

Sherman

Governance, Politics, And Public Confidence

Part of making decisions in the public arena is the perception that the people of you. That you have not a clue to what you are doing.  Politics, the art of making deals to get what you want, is often perceived by the public as an evil and the reason they think so is: the decisions public elected officials make are often odd, to say the least.

Governance is how those political decisions are carried out and the public will either be on board or will oppose you.  Enough opposition and if you run for reelection you will either loose or have a hard time retaining the office

So what drives the confidence of the average voter?

• Government waste in regards to money.
• Their ability to pay for the services that government supplies.
• Their ideas being heard not just tolerated.
• Other groups or individuals being given more opportunity than they have to do anything.

Are the top four reasons people will have or not have confidence in you as an elected office holder.

If the public thinks that you are wasting their money, you will not get more if they can help it.  If you account, in the budget process, for every penny of income and every penny of expense then raising taxes will be easer.  If you cannot account completely or if a newspaper points out either in your expenses then the voters will not trust you. 

If the voter’s are having a hard time finically and you ask for more money they will not be happy.  The answer will be no; so getting the best bang for the buck in providing services, what ever those services are, is essential.

In the public hearings, or in a private meeting, if the public perceives that you really do not want to hear form them then expect lots of opposition. In making political decisions, like requiring all gasoline sold to have ethanol in it, you need to give equal weight to people when they tell you that your decision is bad for them.  Bad because it will take more fuel for them to get to work, go to the doctor, put food on the table. 

If you make a political decision to place more opportunities for some groups, either ethnic or religious, ahead of another group then the public will loose confidence in you as an equal handed politician.

The best example of each of these, governance “what not to do”, is in Portland Oregon.  The confidence level loss is so great, especially in the school system, that the population is beginning to decline

This is expected when elected officials crawl Down the Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking.

 

Sherman

Proving Where The Money Goes

Most of the people in your community would love to know “where the money goes”.  This is the function of budgets but it is sometimes hard to find out just what is being bought.

On this blog I have placed links to various governments and quasi governments and with the exception of the Town Of Friday Harbor it is impossible to tell what the money is actually being spent on.

Some counties, like Multnomah or San Juan, do not include the narrative with the budget.  Others have the narrative but under a separate cover so making a connection to income and expenses is impossible.  Portland City Schools is a real good case in point as it takers a request based on a federal law to get both the budget and the narrative.

It is incumbent for elected persons to construct the government budget, Federal, State, County, and city in such a way as to prove where the money goes.  Other types of budgets are liked by some in civil service because it allows money to be shifted Willie Nellie from department to department without notice.

Come to think of it, some elected people resist the kind of budget where the narrative goes with the numbers fro the same reason.  This is why they are Down the Sewer Pipe – Politically speaking.

Sherman

Why conservation is a bad idea

Going green is the thing to do these days and there are a Varity of reasons for doing so.  There is a cost that no one is addressing and as policies are made there are the forgotten things.

The cost of most of the services on a municipally are, in point of fact, driven by scale.  It takes a lot of money to make drinking water safe for a few but the cost for making drinking water safe for a lot of people is relativity small.  One of the ways to insure that people of lower incomes do not come to your community is to embark on “forced” conservation.

As resources are conserved they are used less and the less they are used the more that they cost.  By using ordnances to “force” people to conserve they use less and it costs more to provide the service.

Conservation, then, can be used to limit the population based on income.  People why cannot afford the service will not be able to live in your community.  From a standpoint of the United States Constitution this is a bad thing.  Addressed in the laws regarding rent and access an end run by a community, like Scottsdale Arizona or Portland Oregon, around the Constitution is being made by the very people elected to office who took an oath to protect the population from such ideas.

What conservation actually does is to make water, sewer, solid waste removal, more expensive.  The added expense is acquired because the less water is used the more it costs to make it pure.  The less the sewer is used the more it cost to maintain, the less solid waste is collected the more it costs to collect it.

Conservation is being used to insure communities that they do not have to rub shoulders with “Those kind of People”.  When talking about conservation in your community make sure it is based on the lack of resources as it relates the he community as a while.

Sherman