Tax caps spell a slow death for government services

I heard NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg at a press conference once say something like "Everyone wants great service [from their city government] but no one wants to pay for it. "

This must be true for the the proponents of tax caps, who want to put the slow kill on local government spending. A much better course of action would be for municipalities to post their incoming revenue and budgets on the Internet therefore citizens can see where money is being spent, and make sure that waste and abuse by officials are kept under control. But of course politicians would rather push tax caps because they probably have something to hide.

Tax caps are big in Massachusetts. They limit the amount of property and school taxes a municipality can impose. As a result of tax caps, Massachusetts schools and public services like libraries, police, firefighters, public works and recreation programs are slowly being shrunk into nothing.

Some tax caps are set below the Consumer Price Index and therefore the municipality cannot even attempt to keep up with inflation and services must be cut.

What surprises me is that this trend appears to the worst in the most affluent and educated communities. Massachusetts is the state that spawned the Kennedys for goodness sake, I always thought it was full of liberal intellectuals not right-wing yahoos. Newton, MA, a very wealthy suburb of Boston, recently cut city services through tax caps. This included closing four branch libraries. The branch libraries eventually re-opened staffed solely by volunteers. Soon they will need volunteer police and sanitation workers. I'm assuming they already have volunteer firefighters, but usually wealthy people are more concerned with making sure there mansions are safe from the threat of fire than they are with any other type of municipal services, so I bet the firefighters are still paid.

This trend will continue throughout the country as jobs continue to move off shore, and the rich being the only ones with money refuse to pick up the tab through taxation. If someone in your community starts the rally for tax caps it would be a good idea to counter attack buy starting a movement to make your local government's budget available online so everyone can see where the money goes, and then help local politicians make a decision as to what services need to be cut or if there is really a need to raise taxes.