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EDITORIAL
It's your money
(Published February 7, 2005)

D.C. government leaders are patting themselves on the back again, touting a $317.5 million budget surplus at the end of fiscal 2004 and $1.2 billion in cash reserves as proof of the wonderful job they are doing at running the city.

Let's rephrase that.

The District's elected officials think it is a good thing that they collected taxes and fees from the public last year that went far beyond covering the costs of services rendered – and an unbroken string of similar multimillion-dollar surpluses in recent years allows them to sit atop a huge nest egg that would reasonably make many cash-strapped municipal and state governments envious.

Now let's add some perspective.

We're continually told that many D.C. children spend their school day uncomfortably crossing and re-crossing their legs, preoccupied with countering a natural urge that they cannot relieve without walking into a putrid room that would make most Washingtonians want to vomit.

And some people wonder why these kids can't perform well on tests? Get real. City inspectors would shut down private businesses in a heartbeat if their facilities offered the public the same levels of safety and healthfulness found in too many of our public schools. But it's good enough for our kids.

There's something very wrong here.

Real estate taxes continue to soar, tax and fee collections continue to rise – yet the D.C. government continues to plead poverty to its citizens when it comes time to deliver the public services those dollars are supposed to pay for.

City officials spend millions every year to help private industry create new jobs here and, ostensibly, to train residents for work – yet the District's unemployment rate, at 9 percent and rising for the past four months, continues to far exceed the rate in every other local jurisdiction and puts the nation's capital among U.S. cities with the highest unemployment. In most of the country, unemployment is going down.

Meanwhile, the mayor proposes an almost laughable long-range plan to "end homelessness" in the District that focuses on putting roofs over people's heads without an equal focus on connecting homeless individuals to jobs that provide a living wage.

And how well are local officials spending and investing local tax dollars to meet the public's real needs?

The city government's current penchant to promote "economic development" by acting as a bank for Big Business (i.e., using the District's bond-issuing authority to shower low-interest, creative financing on major businesses that could get their projects funded privately) continues to use the tax dollars of small, local businesses against their own growth. D.C. officials have been hesitant to attach requirements to public financing that would help resolve nagging public needs – including truly affordable housing. And while hefty taxpayer assistance has brought several new supermarkets to the District in recent years, a large proportion of the population continues to travel long distances to buy groceries.

The big picture for D.C. residents belies the self-promotion by government officials. And, by the way, your tax dollars are paying for their public relations efforts, too.

Copyright 2005 The Common Denominator