If we’ve learned anything from the debate over our unwillingness to support new taxes for road construction, it’s that an alarmingly high number of Baton Rouge residents have zero trust in the people running our government, Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball says.
“This contempt isn’t exclusively for the present day cast of characters, but extends to anyone who has sat in one of those seats since the turn of the century,” Ball writes in his latest column. “To be fair, the mistrust dates back further than that, but has zealously mushroomed with suburban population growth, the middle class’ increasing abhorrence of taxes and the widening belief that what we receive from government is out of whack from what we give.”
There’s also, he adds, the incessant drumbeat of local government being little more than a cesspool of wasteful spending.
But the irony is that our distrust in “small-government loving, tax-hating East Baton Rouge” is that our government has grown bigger, our higher taxes and spending more inefficient.
“That’s not to say our mistrust isn’t misplaced. We have a nasty habit of electing a confederacy of dunces to the Metro Council, the group principally responsible for the spending of general fund dollars,” Ball says.
And under the guise of greater taxpayer control over public-dollar spending, Baton Rouge went nuts creating dedicated taxing authorities—enabling the school system and the non-elected leaders of BREC and the library system to levy their own taxes and spend how they see fit.
“This, of course, has the added benefit of largely removing the mayor and council from the spending equation. In short, what we’ve done is create governments within the city-parish government, each operating—and taxing—independently and with no regard to the wants and needs of the other micro-governments.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
