The explosion in the Gulf — along with the lost lives and the damage that it is doing the region’s economy — should be enough to get President Obama to a abandon his off-shore drilling plan. I said “should,” because it is not clear that anyone is ready to stand up to corporate American on the issue.
Property tax caps do not work. Ask the people in Colorado Springs who are doing without street lights. Hell, ask the people right here in New Jersey what happens when a cap is imposed, even when it is a rather loose 4 percent.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, sums up the problem pretty straightforwardly: Caps. CBPP says, “may hold down property taxes,” but “they are likely to impair local governments’ ability to provide education, public safety, and other services residents demand and need. They also are likely to make the local revenue system more regressive.”
Property tax caps do nothing to change the main drivers behind higher property taxes. They cannot slow the increase in the cost of health care or fuel, for example, which reflects forces outside of the control of local officials. Nor do they change the demand for local public services, such as quality K-12 education, public safety, and good roads.
There are ways of mitigating these problems — replacing property taxes with state funding, giving citizens a right to override caps at the ballot box, shifting revenue from property taxes to other sources — but they rarely are invoked and when they are tend to exacerbate the impact of the cap. (Richer communities can afford to override, while lower-income communities cannot; sales tax and use fees tend to hit lower-income residents hardest.)
Academic studies have found that in most cases, property tax limits have led not to a shrinkage in the public sector but instead to a shift to other revenue sources, such as state aid and fees. In places where the caps have had an effect, however, the outcome has been negative.
And yet, Gov. Chris Christie is still pushing this dubious notion, telling New Jersey mayors to expect his proposed 2.5 percent tax levy cap to gain passage (it has to be approved by the state Legislature and then by voters in November).
Christie said he will propose legislation next week to put a constitutional amendment instituting the cap on the November ballot. If legislators pass the ballot question and it’s approved by voters, municipalities will have to hold their property tax growth 2.5 percent a year unless voters overrule it by referendum. Under Christie’s proposal, if a town raises property taxes less than the capped level one year, it will be able to bank those savings and exceed the cap in future years if necessary.
New Jersey residents already have dysfunctional government, including too many different government entities and too great a reliance on property taxes. But there remains some flexibility in the system, unlike the travesty that California and Colorado governments have become. Do we really want to fix our problems by making them worse?
Mark Doty will be reading at the South Brunswick Library poetry series (which I organize) on Sunday at 2 p.m. He is a wonderful poet, so come on out.
If you need any incentive, here is my e-mail interview with him, which ran today in the Post.
Dispatches, on the legalized criminality that plagues not just Wall Street but American capitalism, can be found here.
ABC this morning discussed a poll that shows some difficulties facing Democrats as they head into the November elections. The numbers show a real anger at incumbents, meaning we could see some seats flip, though it still appears unlikely that either house will flip parties.
Something else caught my eye, however. It was this bit of information:
In another vulnerability for the president, Americans by 56-40 percent said they preferred smaller government with fewer services — almost exactly the average the past 26 years — but by a vast 77-15 percent thought Obama prefers the opposite, larger government with more services. That, plus concerns about the deficit, seem ripe for a 2010 campaign theme for the Republican Party.
People say they want/prefer smaller government. As ABC points out, the numbers have remained pretty consistent since the Reagan administration.
This is not news, nor is it particularly enlightening. Americans are inundated with anti-government rhetoric, and not just from Fox News. They get it from the mainstream stations, as well, it seems anticlimactic that Americans would say they dislike government. As always, the definition of small government is left unstated, as is the impact that shrinking government and cutting services would have on the lives they live.
People want smaller government, but what they really mean is they want it for others and not necessarily for themselves.
Middle class taxpayers want welfare curtailed but yell when their mortgage deductions are cut.
We hate regulations, but when the government fails to ensure that hte hamburger bought at the local store is tainted with e coli, we should loudly and demand action.
We want good schools, well-stocked libraries, police departments with enough manpower to keep us safe. We want roads without potholes, bridges that do not collapse, working traffic lights. We want a safety net when we fall on tough times (though we prefer that it not stretch too far or cover too many people we don’t like).
The Tea Party right now lives the contradiction. This motley collection of angry white folks has been protesting the alleged growth of government under the Obama administration, calling the president a socialist, a communist, a fascist, Stalin, Hitler (as if these terms were interchangeable). But think about what they also say: “Keep government out of my Medicare.”
Just as interestingly, we have the Arizona immigration law, which has support from the Tea Partiers (or most of them), even though it expands police power in the state — and they support harsh restrictions on the border, another expansion of police power.
But that expansion is OK, because the people at the target end of the expansion, are the dark ones, the ones who do not speak English.
As I said, Americans want smaller government — but only on our terms.
Send me an e-mail.
