I read, each week, the Weekly Report from Whitewater’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner. The August 13th issue has clippings that Brunner chose to include from news stories and columns published elsewhere. Brunner included one from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Here’s the clipping Brunner included:

Krugman States Anti-Government Movement Hurting “Basic Government Functions.”
Paul Krugman writes in his column for the New York Times (8/8, A9), “We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions – essential services that have been provided for generations – are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.” Krugman argues that “the antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud…But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.”

Although Krugman’s a noted, respected economist, but he’s a poor columnist. Worse than a poor columnist, though, is any appointed city bureaucrat who re-prints a column like this — the content is partly false, partly distorted, and the bureaucrat’s use of it is self-pitying and tone deaf.

First, Krugman’s column, one I presume Brunner actually read, talks about how America is unpaving roads because of a bad economy. That’s misleading, as Jack Shafer notes, in a column at the Washington Posts’s Slate entitled, What Krugman, Maddow, and the press corps don’t understand about gravel roads. Only a minuscule number of roads are returning to unpaved gravel, and in many cases that’s because they’ve been replaced by newer, paved roads. Furthermore, as Shafer observes, America’s been on a road-paving frenzy for decades. We don’t lack for paved roads.

Second, Brunner uses the headline — perhaps one that someone else originally vote — “Krugman States Anti-Government Movement Hurting “Basic Government Functions.” ” There’s really no significant anti-government movement in America — there’s a limited government movement, a limited and responsible government movement. All sensible people, of whom one includes libertarians, believe in the truly basic government functions of public safety for police and fire, for example. There are questions about policy for police and fire departments, but no one questions that American communities need both services. It’s just hyperbole and grandstanding to contend otherwise.

It’s a false dichotomy to contend that there are two sides to this debate: anti-government or pro-basic functions. That’s just silly. The question is what size for basic functions, not whether there will be basic functions. I can see how a columnist might exaggerate the debate, but what of Brunner? How can he contend that there are anti-government forces fighting basic services, when he’s been paid for a long career, at public expense?

His role is not nearly as fundamental as police or fire protection, and yet he’s enjoyed an long career as a city manager on the public tab.

Third, Brunner’s leadership is hardly a model of efficiency, sound management, or good governance. Whitewater has a tax incremental financing debacle, budget problems, high poverty, open storefronts, and problems of basic enforcement & the administration of justice, all of which I have written about before. If one is to look for someone who would stand athwart a supposed challenge to government, itself, perhaps it should be someone less connected with the many problems we now face.

Having committed so many resources to big-ticket project after big-ticket project, all the while wheedling for his own assistant to the city manager, in times of hardship for front-line employees and residents, Brunner’s just not a credible defender of good and sound fiscal policy.

There’s a serious examination due of Whitewater’s tax policy under Brunner’s administration, as well as our tax incremental financing debacle, his administration’s city budget policy, a full assessment of the Innovation Center, and beyond all that, issues of equitable enforcement of regulations, and administration of justice. Much of this will require a careful, line-by-line assessment (as of Brunner’s new Fiscal Analysis for the City of Whitewater).

It’s a task well worth undertaking in the months ahead — to see where we truly are, and how to walk the difficult terrain ahead. There are reasonable solutions and reform proposals to consider along the way. I am convinced that, no matter how challenging these times for Whitewater or America, a set of reforms can produce a fairer, more prosperous city. Not how things have been, but by change, to create new and lasting opportunities.