Opinion

By Wayne Hoffman

 Summer is when our local governments start work to create the budgets under which they'll operate starting this fall. It wasn't that long ago that local government budget-setting was a boring, process-driven affair for bureaucrats and elected officials, maybe a news reporter and, occasionally, an intrepid taxpayer or two. I remember attending many a budget hearing where no taxpayers showed up. Today, the dynamic has changed. People are going to their city hall, county commission and school board meeting. And the regular folks who pay the bills are demanding accountability for how their tax dollars are being spent.

Unfortunately, too many bureaucrats try to maximize impacts of budget cuts in order to maximize public outrage. That's what happened earlier this year in Blackfoot, where school officials suggested that all teachers are equally eligible for firing via a lottery system, and days ago in Meridian, where school officials decided to put a kindergarten plan they knew was unpopular on the table. As if the bureaucrats expected the response would be anything but bad.

Taxpayers deserve better, which is why sometimes they're the ones who have to ask the tough questions that the bureaucrats aren't addressing. Here are just some of those questions:

What programs have you eliminated since the start of the recession? How many employees do you have now versus a few years ago? What regulations have you eliminated? What steps have you taken/are taking to cut the tax levy?

How much is being spent for employee health benefits? What do those benefits look like, and how much of the cost is borne by taxpayers alone? Have less expensive options been considered, such as Health Savings Accounts? All too often, taxpayers are stuck with paying all or nearly all the cost of government health insurance premiums for expensive health care plans that cover essentially healthy government employees. There are better options.

How much money are government employees making? Are pay raises still being awarded even though the private sector hasn't been able to give pay raises in several years. It is true that in some cases, local government agencies have frozen pay levels.  But we've seen plenty of examples in which pay raises are still guaranteed to public employees despite that's happening in the rest of the economy, and despite the fact that government employee pay has now eclipsed that of people earning a living in the private sector.

Has the government cut back on unnecessary travel, professional development, membership fees and other non-essential spending? If local governments still have employees jetting off to junkets all over the country and the world, they truly haven't cut back.

Taxpayers should ask local government officials about staff levels. Is the local government planning office staffed like it was a few years ago when the economy was chugging along? Are police departments staffed like it was when crime was higher? Is police overtime going up or down now that crime is lower? For school districts, taxpayers should ask about the growth in administration and non-teaching positions, and what steps have been taken to cut out the administrative bureaucracies have that have taken hold in our school districts in recent years.

Certainly, there are more questions to ask. This is a start. Taxpayers -- go to your local government budget hearings. Ask questions. Demand answers.

Wayne Hoffman

Executive Director

Idaho Freedom Foundation