The budget crisis in Ohio

[Scott Meeson]

The ultimate holiday greeting is in the mail-your property tax bill. Here is a nice little article to accompany your bill:http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/12/20/report-offers-answers-state-local-budget-crises.html?sid=101

What I like about a "crisis"...it can create short-term and long-term strategic urgency.*


Scott Meeson





*Assumes we have strong leadership capable of maximizing the opportunities presented

[Bill Call]

What I like about a "crisis"...it can create short-term and long-term strategic urgency.*

Don't count on it.

I see that the Chamber of Commerce and the Government Unions are at the table. Where are the representatives of local government?

Local government provides all the basic, fundamental, traditional services that people expect from government. Why aren't those governments providing there own pressure on the State?

[Bryan Schwegler]

I find it interesting.

I do somewhat agree that I do think we have too many local jurisdictions in this state.

Why do we need 88 counties? Why do we need thousands of municipal governments duplicating every service and most staff positions? Why do we need thousands of individual school districts with the same duplication?

Really does seem like there could potentially be a lot of streamlining and costs savings.

I'm not for huge mega-cities, but I'm also not wholesale against regionalism where it makes sense.

This many entities made sense in the day when travel was difficult and communication was slow and unorganized. That's not the case today.

[Gary Rice]

I suppose that all of these government levels are a mixed blessing. We seem to have so many layers of government because Americans historically want as much local control as possible of their own affairs. The fewer governments there are, the bigger the ones that are left, become. The bigger a government, the less "say" that individuals traditionally have in their own governance. At least, that's my take on the situation, for what it's worth.

I just think that we need to be cautious when people want to relinquish some of their local power in exchange for temporary gains that might seem to make sense in the short term, but might relinquish or limit either their personal freedoms, or the ability to contribute greater local political input, on down the road.

Financial prudence in government does seem to be a bit of a balancing act, at best.

Back to the banjo...

[Bill Call]

I'm not for huge mega-cities, but I'm also not wholesale against regionalism where it makes sense.

This many entities made sense in the day when travel was difficult and communication was slow and unorganized. That's not the case today.

Why do we need so many colleges?

Why do we need so many non-profit organization?

There might be some small efficiencies in some consolidation of some services. Rejoining RITA might make sense. Outsourcing trash pick up and street maintenance might make sense.

The recent study on fire departments concluded that consolodation would result in no real savings. Why? Because the only proposal on the table was to take the current work rules, pay, benefits and management and transfer it to one larger organization. That is the essence of all the talk of regionalization: Take the current costly and inefficient operations of 10 small governments and combine them into one big costly and inefficient operation.

This area has to water suppliers, Avon Lake and The City of Cleveland. Avon Lake provides superior services for substantially less money. How would you bench mark a City water service if there is only one water service?

Why do we have two regional airports? Akron Canton is expanding at a furious pace, has room for further expansion and is right in the middle of the growth center of Northeast Ohio. Why not close Hopkins? Does the region need two airports?

The Clinics hospitals are at 66% capacity yet they are building a new hospitals in Avon and Medina. What City is going to give up its hospital? I'll give you three guesses.

Downtown has a 25% office vacancy rate. The solution of the regional planners? To build a new taxpayer subsidized office building in the flats.

Regionalization is no panacea.

[Bryan Schwegler]

Regionalization is no panacea.

Especially when you hand pick several out of context examples to prove that, right?

So Bill, being the understander of business that you are, can you explain to me the CBA benefit of 88 counties and thousands of local governments and school districts? What is wrong with some regionalization?

I'd love to hear anyone come up with a good reason why we need so many counties? Seems like a lot of states with more population than us and much higher growth rates are easily able to get by with fewer.

It also seems to me that several major metro areas that have tried various levels of regionalization have had some pretty good results. Regionalization is not a bad word, and it's certainly not an all or nothing proposition as some make it out to be.

[Bill Call]

Regionalization is no panacea.

Especially when you hand pick several out of context examples to prove that, right?

That's my specialty!

I'm not actually opposed to regionalization or combining services, sometimes it makes sense.

Summit County has a County building department that runs quite well. Getting permits in the City of Cleveland is a chore.

I just don't see the efficiency and cost savings in taking 10 small bureaucracies and merging them into one big bureaucracy. Unless you change salaries, benefits and work rules you won't save a dime.

I was serious about the airport. If people are serious about regional effort and efficiencies of scale they should look to something besides the fire department or the local school board or bulk buying toilet paper.

The Feds are investing tens of millions of dollars in Akron/Canton airport to make it a first class hub. Why? Where are the regionalists to oppose this duplication of service? Their lack of concern tells me they aren't serious about regionalization. They simply want to be seen to offer solutions to the regions problems and regionalization has a nice ring to it.

By the way, whenever the PD does a story about areas that have regional government like Columbus or Indianapolis or Mineapolis/St. paul they forget to mention that those cities are State capitals.

How about this: Create 5 private companies to operate the areas fire departments. Cities would be able to pick the company that offers the best price and best service.

Or: Regionalize the water lines and allow Avon and Cleveland to compete for customers?


Or: Freeze the construction of new medical buildings that simply duplicate existing infrastructure. Somehow I don't think that's what the regionalists have in mind.

[Bryan Schwegler]

By the way, whenever the PD does a story about areas that have regional government like Columbus or Indianapolis or Mineapolis/St. paul they forget to mention that those cities are State capitals.

I don't read the PD alone for my information on the success of regionalism in other areas. Also, there are more than a few examples of cities that aren't state capitals that have benefited.

Or: Freeze the construction of new medical buildings that simply duplicate existing infrastructure. Somehow I don't think that's what the regionalists have in mind.

Considering these are being built by a private company, are you suggesting that we add regulation on businesses on how many they can build and where they can build at? Seems opposite of your general philosophy, pretty shocking

[Bill Call]

Or: Freeze the construction of new medical buildings that simply duplicate existing infrastructure. Somehow I don't think that's what the regionalists have in mind.

Considering these are being built by a private company, are you suggesting that we add regulation on businesses on how many they can build and where they can build at? Seems opposite of your general philosophy, pretty shocking

Not really. I'm just getting into the regional spirit. Regionalists talk about the need for "smart growth", a euphemism for central planning. Should the Clinic be the only institution exempt from the planners?

Can you think of any service that should be regionalized? What does regionalism mean to you? To me it means the leadership doesn't have a clue so they talk about the need to find "regional solutions".

When asked what regional solutions they come up with something like "We should bulk buy office supplies!".

[Bryan Schwegler]

Can you think of any service that should be regionalized? What does regionalism mean to you? To me it means the leadership doesn't have a clue so they talk about the need to find "regional solutions".

To me it's about cutting down on redundant services, redundant administrators, staff, even mayors, council people, and other elected local and county officials where it makes sense. It's about aligning laws, zoning regulations, etc.

Most of today's government bodies and political subdivisions were created during a time when the population was much higher and on an upward growth trend. That's not really the case any more.

All this has done is created overlapping bureaucracies , duplication of capabilities, and a patchwork of rules, regulations, and zoning laws that differs from town to town. And in the end all you get is increased cost, wasted money, and an environment that makes it difficult for business to operate which in turn means less jobs, less growth, less tax income which then spirals into cut services and slashed government budgets. It's a vicious cycle.

And to top it all off we have thousands of little towns and 88 counties all sniping at each other and stealing little businesses back and forth instead of truly trying to work together to improve the region because no one seems to realize in this state that we don't live in little islands that end at our town border. No, we leave it up to our incompetent state government to try to improve things and look how well that's worked over the last 30 or so years.

[Bill Trentel]

Regionalism as it is being sold to us is really about extracting the last bit capital (public area spending) from the urban areas and transferring it to the x-urbs. The x-urbs sustainability relies on continued expansion and they have tapped out all of the private sector capital, attracting a large majority of the middle and upper class households and expanding businesses from the urban areas with the promises of lower taxes and vast green fields. Their only option, is more public funds.
We will see the big push for reducing human services spending (state and local) (mostly spent in urban and rural areas) and increasing business development spending, mostly spend in the x-urbs on tax breaks to corporations, so that Eaton can move from Cleveland to Beachwood and American Greetings can move to ________ (name your green field here) and for x-urb infrastructure maintenance and expansion.

Regionalism not about reducing public spending, just transferring it.

Bill

[Bill Trentel]

To me it's about cutting down on redundant services, redundant administrators, staff, even mayors, council people, and other elected local and county officials where it makes sense. It's about aligning laws, zoning regulations, etc.

Lets start right here at home!
We can be annexed by Cleveland and become wards 20 & 21 and merge schools with the Cleveland schools.
Look at all the money you'll save, lower taxes, lower water bills, it will be wonderful.

Bill