18 May 2009

How Local Taxes are Spent: Case Study

It's far too easy to adopt a knee-jerk opposition to all taxes. It's a little tougher to take the time to assess how monies are being spent and which expenditures should be cut. Anyone advocating tax cuts should not be taken seriously without providing specific details about where the cuts would come from. Vague sloganeering about "big government" shouldn't cut it (I just realized that's a pun); if a tax-cut proposal wants to be taken seriously it should specifically identify things that are inefficient, unnecessary, overcharged, redundant, etc.

So I appreciated the article "A Day in the Life of a City Engineering Supervisor" in the Van Wert Times-Bulletin. It details some of the job duties of this position, something that is off the radar for most of us and therefore gives us a peek into what local tax dollars do and how fiscal shortfalls affect local services.

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