I posted last week against a proposal for Walworth County to purchase nearly two hundred acres of overpriced, half-unsuitable parkland. Four days later, on Saturday, June 15th, the Janesville Gazette‘s editorialist wrote in support of the proposed purchase.
For my original post, see Hey, Walworth County, How About Buying Over-Priced, Half-Unsuitable Parkland with Taxpayer Money!
(The Gazette doesn’t post its editorials online, but I’ll reproduce and reply to their principal contentions, below. )
I’ll briefly summarize my previous position, and then group the newspaper editorialist’s arguments into one of three categories: those that concede my contentions, those that repeat unthinking basic fallacies, or those that actually make the case for the purchase weaker, and the case against purchase even stronger.
Unexpected, but I think demonstrable: the Gazette‘s editorial actually undermines the position it attempts to bolster.
Initial case against the purchase.
I offered seven arguments against a public purchase of supposed parkland at a cost of $1.9-million dollars: (1) the cost is high, nearly two-million dollars, (2) the land is likely over-priced, (3) it’s a purchase for the low-priority goal of additional recreational land, (4) there’s already the 22,000-acre Kettle Moraine State Forest, Southern Unit nearby, (5) the purchase would deplete the park fund and require additional borrowing, (6) there are greater needs for this taxpayer money, and (7) it’s wholly false to contend that the purchase would truly have ‘zero tax impact.’
What the editorialist concedes.
The Gazette’s editorial makes no attempt – since there’s no attempt that could succeed – to contend that this is the best use of millions in public money, of all uses.
One reads, unconvincingly, that the land’s supposedly pretty as a postcard, as though there were no other land in the county already and equally as beautiful. There’s not the slightest attempt to explain why Walworth County should consider this small, expensive parcel more beautiful – or attractive to tourists – than the vast Kettle Moraine State Forest.
Simply asserting that it will somehow draw incremental tourists – as against all the other natural and created attractions in the county – isn’t a policy position – it’s an unsupported declaration.
If the Gazette wishes to assert the value of a $1.9-million-dollar public purchase, it owes readers more than a tired cliché about something being ‘pretty as a postcard.’
There’s no independent, credible assessment offered that the land is even accurately priced.
The canard the editorialist repeats.
One reads repeatedly of an impossibility – that there would be zero tax impact from this purchase. There is, of course, a way in which this is seemingly – but only seemingly – correct: as an appeal to local selfishness. Presumably, what Mr. Brunner (Walworth County Central Services Director) and others mean when they so contend is that there would be zero local impact – an appeal to Walworth County taxpayers’ hopes that their taxes won’t go up.
It’s a pigs-to-the-trough call, the profligate policymaker’s contention that one can take public money from the state or federal government and it will have no local tax impact. It’s also deeply condescending, treating people falsely as gluttons, as though they’re greedily seeking any local advantage.
It’s not true of the overwhelming majority in Walworth County – not at all. This patronizing, false view of people as greedy and selfish reflects poorly only on Walworth County’s officials.
All public spending either increases taxes or public debt – there is no free money. Unless the Gazette‘s editorialist or Mr. Brunner operate a printing press, they cannot escape this fundamental truth. (In fact, even if they have a press, any amount of money they print would have an impact all its own, and negative on the community, state, and nation.)
Significantly, as Walworth County taxpayers are also state taxpayers, they’ll inescapably pay a price in taxes for taking state money for this over-priced land.
This selfish thinking, in which public men insist that they can confer local benefits without local costs, is ignorant chicanery. It belongs alongside perpetual motion machines, cold fusion, and tea leaves as too-good-to-be-true ideas.
How the editorialist makes the case for the parkland weaker, and the case against it stronger.
One learns three additional points about the possible purchase. First, the county didn’t budget for this land properly last year – and so it’s a rushed, cobbled-together proposal now. It’s a grant-grab, one imagines, a hurry-up fire drill to take tax money that officials falsely contend is free grant money.
If new parkland were so important, Messrs. Brunner and Bretl (County Administrator David Bretl) should have budgeted properly last year for this year’s expenses.
If they cared so very much for this professed need, they would have tried to satisfy it sooner, and more deliberately.
Absurdly, one learns from the Gazette‘s editorial that “absent a budgetary change in direction, that money [$50,000 per year to pay off parkland borrowing] wouldn’t be available to maintain roads.”
Is the editorialist joking? That’s a prime reason to oppose this unnecessary parkland purchase.
Funny, too, that Mr. Brunner was described when he took his current job as Central Services Director and Highway Commissioner. That’s quite the highway commissioner, whose hankering for unnecessary parkland would leave the county’s roads at a disadvantage.
Finally, one reads the contention that – as half the parkland isn’t really useful at all but for farming – that Walworth County could rent it out as farmland.
This is the final absurdity – that a public entity would buy parkland half unsuited and then lease it as farmland.
Walworth County would thus become a public competitor to existing private landowners, leasing land as they might wish to do.
It’s not the place of county government to buy a thing and use half of it for another purpose in competition with private farmers.
The case against this purchase is stronger, and the case for it even weaker, after the Gazette‘s editorial.
Thanks, gentlemen, you’ve unwittingly helped the good cause of prudent public policy by talking still more about this foolish proposal.
