Budgetary proposals are important, but there is a more important reform that Whitewater can undertake. Changes to the way that Whitewater imposes code-enforcement and criminal fines would do much to help our city step away from a reliance on futile punitive measures that operate as a regressive form of taxation, and as an incentive to catching and fining people to balance the city budget.
Whitewater relies on a large, expanding enforcement scheme of fines and penalties. Nuisance code violations, parking tickets, underage drinking citations – they all fill the city coffers. The scope of fines should be reduced significantly. There are five problems with current imposition of punitive fines and penalties in our city.
First, that sort of fine does not affect serious, violent crime. Those reprehensible criminal acts are not the subject of mere nuisance fines.
Second, Whitewater’s dependence on these fines to balance its budget places fiscal incentive in the way of legitimate enforcement. Everyone in America gripes that his speeding ticket, etc. is used to help his given city make its budget. It’s true in Whitewater.
Third, too many of those who issue fines and penalties are poorly led and trained. This is a police force led by those who disclaim responsibility for consequences. That’s a message of unaccountability. Without accountability, even the best officers, with the best initial training, will slide into mediocre practices. In a force from a small town, with a less competitive pool of applicants, the only hedge against mediocrity is accountability. Good leadership takes an average force and makes it better through discipline and high expectations. A weak leader shuns holding employees accountable, in the theory that they’ll like him more, and in the mistaken impression that they cannot do better in any event. Eventually, he makes any excuse and rationalization he can to puff them up, and justify their – and his — questionable conduct. That’s the problem we face in Whitewater.
Fourth, Whitewater has an undeniable problem with the inequitable imposition of fines and penalties. This problem is so endemic to Whitewater’s culture that it’s even been mentioned by elected officials at Common Council meetings. Signs, banners, etc. – some people get fined, some people do not. Our city is rife – far more than other places – with accounts of how some people are fined, and others are never cited, despite similar violations. It’s been a problem for years, and no one has made it better. Some people have – not without justification – concluded that they cannot be fined, based on their connections and status within the city.
(Under these circumstances, the current administration’s suggestion that we should add more neighborhood enforcement resources, etc. is ill-advised, and tone-deaf to the serious challenge from bias.)
Fifth, the over-dependence on these fines operates as a regressive form of taxation. (Readers know that I favor a much smaller government, requiring lower taxes. That’s a standard libertarian position.) Reliance on fines and penalties collected for revenue generation is fundamentally different from real estate taxes that derive from real property’s assessed value. Whitewater’s reliance on fines as a revenue source transforms a criminal and civil penalty into another source of revenue – a source of revenue that disproportionately affects lower income residents.
If fines were not so critical to balancing the budget – and if they were imposed fairly – justice would be their principal object, and penalties would be father removed from being merely another element of our budget.
When they become just another, vital element of the budget, they should be held to standards of taxation and fiscal policy, and not merely principles of punitive sanction. As a source of taxation, penalties imposed to generate revenue disproportionately impact poor and working class residents. That’s why they’re fiscally regressive.
The current administration is outwardly progressive and polite in manner, yet it consistently ignores the broken character of our enforcement culture. Inequitable administration of justice cannot be, by definition, justice. Silence, or politeness, helps us not at all.
My libertarian’s angle for two proposed changes for the city budget were difficult, and this proposal is more difficult still. It is as important as it is difficult: unjust enforcement is among the most serious problems our small city faces. We are citizens of a troubled city, where the fairness and impartiality of justice are in question. All the shrill cries of professionalism do not make it so – experience refutes those empty claims.