Daily Times Shows Same Lack of Leadership As County Executive
January 2, 2009 by Cato
Filed under Development, Fiscal Policy, Maryland, Media, Taxes, Wicomico Politics
Today’s Daily Times publishes an editorial exhibiting the same lack of leadership, vision, and understanding of the issues as we discussed Wednesday in our post on the Wicomico “State of the County” address. Politics is obviously more important than facts; government spending more important than taxpayers.
Whining over the revenue cap is not going to solve anything. While an opponent of the revenue cap, I realize that the voters of Wicomico County do not (and should not) trust County Executive Rick Pollitt with a repeal. Now Pollitt, and the paper, are asking for a revision. This is not politically viable either because bold action requires leaders. To date we have none, either in the County Executive’s office nor at Gannett’s new digs in Northwood.
The Daily Times‘ argument about county revenue proves that they have no understanding of the real problem and seem to believe that government should just keep raising revenue to meet expenses, rather than solve the problems of spending AND the source of that spending:
The housing boom was in full swing, the economy was sailing along and property tax revenue from new construction was not affected by the cap for the first year. So any shortfalls were made up by the taxes collected on new construction, which was not included in the pot that is limited to 2 percent –or less, depending on the rate of inflation –more than the previous year’s revenue.
On average, new residential development costs the county far more than it will ever pay in property taxes. If a development is limited to seniors, at least there will be no children to school. Citizen leaders have asked time and again for the county and municipalities to work together in developing meaningful regulation of this problem; to require developers to pay for the infrastructure required by their projects. Unfortunately, city and county leaders appear more concerned with lining the pockets of developers than solving a pressing problem.
Why? It’s all about more money to spend now. The more cynical side of my nature argues that these officials actually understand that more money will be needed down the road, but do it anyway so that they can grow the size of government today. It’s a never ending spiral that feeds the beast of bureaucracy.
If Pollitt was a leader, he would be calling for legislation now. Waiting until the next development boom will not work. Expropriating land from our farmers is neither a solution to the revenue problem nor good public policy. He would also show some of the traits necessary to convince voters to adopt a rate cap or revise the revenue cap upward. Don’t expect that to happen.
What should you expect? Expect more of the same from both Pollitt and the Daily Times. To these folks it’s about “government revenue”, not spending existing resources as wisely as possible. This alone makes a repeal or even revision of the existing revenue cap a gamble at best, and a fiscal disaster at worse.
