Example of how government metastasizes: Troy, MI

http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/10/example-of-how-government-metastasizes.html

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Example of how government metastasizes: Troy, MI

You don't need a wooden horse to ruin this Troy, the government will do it all by itself, metastasizing constantly into a bigger and bigger burden on the taxpayer. One mechanism bureaucrats use to metastasize government is to peel off essential services and dare taxpayers not to fund them at the ballot box. Police and fire departments have their own millage rates, peeled off so that the central city government can grow but claim they are doing no such thing.  This is how it works: say your city is whatever size it is - 100%. They peel off 10% of their budget in the form of an essential public service like Fire or Police protection which now becomes it's own separate entity on paper and on ballots. Meanwhile the city that should be 90% grows to 98% and claims a 2% cut while it really grew 8%. If you add the 98% city and the 10% service, the taxpayer is on the hook for 108% as city bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for right-sizing government. It's a shell game and Troy is playing it. This time with the library. From The Detroit News: Troy library plans to crowd November ballot. Get this - there are FOUR library millage proposals on the November ballot. Not one or two or three. FOUR!

Voters in one Oakland County suburb are likely to do a double take Nov. 2 when they read a ballot asking them to approve a library tax.

Four proposals to fund library operations — all with very similar language and millage amounts — are on the ballot. All are part of a drive to make the library independent, with its own millage and elected library board.

Library operations were cut back in May, after voters in February rejected a citywide millage increase. But four proposals were placed on the ballot, city spokeswoman Cindy Stewart said, because four individuals collected the necessary signatures to place their own request before voters.

Rhonda Hendrickson, president of Friends of the Troy Public Library, wrote Proposal 1 after researching how other communities fund public libraries. Her proposal calls for creating a Public Act 64 library in Troy, which would be independent and separate from the city’s general fund.

The specific request is for 0.9885 mills for 10 years, which would raise $4.1 million for library operations in its first year.

That's what a metastasizing government looks like. Starts out as a limited value-added to the taxpayer, then grows arms, legs, a head, and then other appendages with no end in sight. As FOUR proposals for an additional library tax hit taxpayers in the face, union benefits in Try have not been touched. How about residents of Troy put union bennies on the ballot in just one question, not four?