That's Not Reform

That's Not Reform

by Mark Luedtke

Boy, do we need big-time government reform in Ohio and the US, but having state government reform local governments is like having the fox reform the hen house. Government in America is supposed to be strongest at the local level, weaker at the state level, and weakest at the Federal level. But we've taken the heritage won for us by the Founding Fathers, the heritage that made America the greatest country in the world, and twisted it backwards. We need to reform our local governments, push reform up to our state governments, and push reform up to the Federal government. Freedom, prosperity, and government reform rise up from the grass-roots. Tyranny and poverty come down from the top.

While I was researching this essay, I discovered the Advance Northeast Ohio website. The website is running a poll asking if regional planning would accelerate economic growth. The answer is a resounding no - reducing taxes, government spending, and regulations would boost the economy - but only 5 voters including me voted no. 63 voted yes. 19 voted not sure, but it's worth a try.

This unscientific poll explains our government and economic problems in Ohio and the US. When a majority of citizens want to forgo free markets for central planning, forgo the ideals, institutions, and systems that made American great in favor of those that made the Soviet Union collapse, the result is titanic government and a faltering economy. And when big state government officials talk about reforming local government, they're really talking about a power grab by the most powerful professional politicians.

The Ohio legislature plans to create a panel on local government reform to investigate how best to reform local government to reduce taxes. This seems like a copy of an Indiana panel that just published its findings and prompted a proposal to restructure Cuyahoga County government. We can't know for sure what the Ohio panel will recommend, but since it will have 9 members, 3 each appointed by the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and the governor, big-government officials all, smart money says it will be pretty similar to the nearly identical plans proposed by Indiana and Cuyahoga County.

The Cuyahoga County plan, proposed by Democrat Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan, is a monster power grab for Cuyahoga County commissioners. Under Hagan's plan, endorsed by Republican Speaker of the House Husted from Kettering, the people would surrender their power to elect the auditor, recorder, treasurer, coroner, engineer, and sheriff to the county commissioners. Those offices would be manned by powerful, new bureaucrats, unaccountable to the people. The commissioners see no reason to bother the people with electing their own government officials when they can be appointed by those same commissioners.

They're selling this plan as a cost savings, and since there's no cost savings associated with this aspect of the plan except the cost of ink on ballots, they also propose combining the offices of auditor, recorder, and treasurer, centralizing all handling of taxpayer money into one office. Not only don't the commissioners like the people deciding who runs their government, they don't like having checks and balances on the handling of the taxpayers' money. The commissioners want to reduce the people to mere money suppliers with no power except to coronate those same county commissioners proposing this plan who will control taxpayers' money and therefore their votes.

The Indiana plan is nearly identical, except it calls for replacing the 3 county commissioners with 1 county executive, and it calls for the elimination of the township level of government. This isn't reform. This is a historic power grab and a formula for nepotism, cronyism, single party rule, and massive corruption, consolidating power into the hands of a few, or 1, professional politicians. Richard Daley and Boss Tweed would be jealous. I guess the planners were afraid their power grab would be too transparent if they called for appointing prosecutors and judges too.

Of course the professional politicians love this plan. It boosts their power at our expense. That power will insure they never get voted out of office. Since politicians will sell this assault on political freedom as reform, and the majority of Ohioans vote to surrender their economic freedom to the government at every opportunity, voters will probably surrender. We lose. They win.

I hope my predictions are wrong because we need real reform, a return to limited government, and we have models of reform to follow. Ireland recently reduced its corporate tax rate to 12.5%, rocketed to third on the index of economic freedom, and its economy is soaring. Still remembering the devastation caused by big-government, eastern Europe adopted low, flat-tax rates and minimal bureaucracy and regulations, and their economies are thriving as a result. Meanwhile, US and western European economies flounder under the burden of big-government. Here in the US, Congress won't even debate the FairTax, the best tax reform plan in the world.

But we don't have to look that far for reform. Butler County recently lowered water rates by 10% and sewage rates by 15% by cutting 22 employees from their Environmental Services Dept. Citizens will suffer no reduction in service, so those jobs and that money were wasted. And don't worry about those lost jobs. The same private sector that paid for those wasteful government jobs will create valuable jobs from the savings. The real reform we need is just that easy.