It’s the season, across Wisconsin, for municipalities to present and approve their 2010 budgets. The process varies by city – some finish quickly, some extend the discussion from October into November.
We are among that latter group – although we are a small town, our municipal budget is a big matter, with considerable discussion.
Last week, the Whitewater Common Council began its review of Whitewater’s proposed budget.
The lengthy meeting was televised, and is available on Blip.tv:
http://blip.tv/file/2750574
The proposed draft of the Whitewater city budget, as presented to the common council, is available online:
http://www.ci.whitewater.wi.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1277
A few observations:
1. Necessary, but not sufficient. Whitewater won’t do without at least minimal services, notably for public safety, so we’ll not get by without a budget. Beyond that, I think we deceive ourselves about how much we must spend and do as a city, and how much it matters.
There’s a big feeling among a small few that the success of Whitewater depends on what city government spends and borrows. In this view, success depends on a series of taxpayer-financed public works projects, either to (1) get the city moving, so to speak, or (2) as an end in themselves.
I don’t believe either has, or will prove, useful or effective. Initiative to initiative, project after project, and still no appreciable change in our socio-economic condition.
We still have high poverty, a struggling working class, and a middle class neither as large nor secure as a more prosperous town might have. The city has not, and through its large public programs probably cannot, change that condition.
2. Impediments are easier. if we cannot spend enough publicly for gain, we can spend and regulate enough for loss. It takes far less to discourage private achievement than it does establish a successful public project (if it can be done at all).
One need only burden a community with a few regulations and restrictions – how many feet for this, how many steps for that – to convince entrepreneurs to go elsewhere.
We have done so very well in this regard – all the talk about being a center of opportunity runs up against the barriers to actual, private achievement.
City government should be smaller in both cost and scope. We spend too much, on grand projects, than we should. Small savings of thousands mean little compared with millions each year, and millions more in bonds, to fund grand projects.
Reducing the cost of government is only part of a solution – reducing the burdensome regulations on construction and operation of a business means just as much. Every tedious regulation on private business activity operates as a penalty against private creativity and community prosperity.
Want to build a better community? Stand out of the way of those who actually know how to build something. In the meantime, while others are building, see that our laws, are regulations, are clear, simple, and fairly enforced.
A project will always seem more exciting, but there is more gain in avoiding regulatory harm than in all the Innovation Centers we might ever have.
3. Trends matter. A leaner budget is surely better than a fat one, with so many unemployed and the number of jobless only increasing. Yet, a year does not a more attractive and inviting city make. It will take several years, and a retreat from the empty dream that Whitewater can grow though big public initiatives, before this will be an inviting community for ambitious newcomers.
(We often attract second-tier investments when we give away vast, favored incentives in construction and preferences to bring someone here. Either they were too weak to get going without municipal breaks, or they were strong enough, and bargained us against their need. The better policy would be a low cost of entry for all.)
One year will not erase our sad reputation as an overly regulated place, or a place where enforcement is spotty, or a place where attention to the next big thing leaves everyone else in the cold.
We jump from project to project, view to view, too easily. Yesterday’s task force might as well have been last century’s task force, so rapidly are initiatives discarded.
We should stick with one policy, and make it a trend. Less government, at less cost, is our path to prosperity.
4. Deliberations and Notice.. Readers have probably seen coverage of the October 20th council meeting highlighting the lack of notice that council gave about a smaller increase – or no increase – in the levy than the proposed budget.
I’m not sure what to make of this concern, as part of the legislative, deliberative process involves uncovering and considering alternatives based on a public discussion. Some ideas are likely to develop only at the first – of a series – of public, council meetings on the budget.
It’s hardly odd that ideas might develop at a council session. In that environment – an open, public setting – one finds perhaps the best, fairest, most open forum for considering a budget.
The contention that all of this should have been decided earlier is unpersuasive.