Stopping fat cats from gnawing at our wallets

Amid the herd of potential candidates unwilling to serve our county by seeking to fill a legislative vacancy, a dark horse stands out. Actually, it’s a dark cat — my black-and-white tabby, Zenger.

Zenger proved his readiness for politics the other night when I departed in a hurry to marvel at fireworks at the county lake and left out a carryout box that still had a few slices of pizza in it.

Upon my return from the “ooh, ahh, I liked that one,” I found the box shoved onto the floor and thrust open. Rather than gnaw on pepperoni, cheese, or even crust, however, Zenger had chosen to chew up and spit out several handfuls of cardboard.

Either he’s a particular eater, preferring things with a consistency similar to the kibble he normally dines on, or he simply doesn’t understand the fundamentals of feline food filching.

Rather, he seems inclined to take after another breed of fat cat — elected officials who don’t really understand one of their primary duties: budgeting money they get from taxpayers.

Even a true wildcat like Elon Musk has a sense for how budgeting is supposed to be done. First, you itemize essential needs and your best idea of what they will cost. Then, you set aside money for expected future major expenses — a roof that eventually will need replacing or a child who eventually will need braces or want to go to college. It’s always best to overestimate these before budgeting for things that would be nice but not necessary.

In the end, you total it all up and compare it to what money’s likely to come in. If your regular paycheck or pension will cover it all, you can take the excess and save up for a big vacation or other splurge. If you won’t have enough, you consider whether you should look at moonlighting or maybe downsizing.

Too often at this time of year, elected officials do budgeting the other way around. They start with the maximum amount of money they think they can squeeze out of taxpayers’ financial turnips without the taxpayers throwing them out of office, then they look at all the ways they can lavish that money on worker raises, new equipment, and other projects that will help them get re-elected.

Rather than stick — as most of the rest of us have to do — with the same amount of money coming in, they opt instead to spend as much as they think they can get away with even before they determine in detail what their community’s needs are.

Being politicians, they wrap it all up in what they regard as a white lie: “No, we aren’t increasing taxes. We’re keeping the tax rate the same. And we can always lower this later.” But they ignore that massive increases in assessed value will mean that the same rates generate lots more money — well more than mere inflation would dictate.

In the City of Marion, for example, reimposing last year’s tax rate would mean almost every taxpayer would end up paying a lot more — 10.5% more, on average. That’s why state law requires governments to calculate the so-called revenue-neutral rate — so taxpayers will know when supposedly holding the line is just another line trying to make you think taxes aren’t increasing when, in fact, they are.

That’s not to say that all government spending is bad or that sometimes tax increases aren’t good. As any businessperson can tell you, you often have to spend money to make money. But the rewards and payback must be clear — not only for the large portion of our community earning meager retirement incomes but also for businesses and others considering locating here.

Combining city and school taxes, a business or resident looking to come to Marion will pay 50.21% more in local taxes than one also considering locating in Hillsboro. If Marion doesn’t provide 50.21% more local services that potential businesses or residents actually want, they never locate here even if Marion hires the world’s best economic developer.

Now is the time for all good elected officials to do what they promised to do before being elected and come to the aid of those paying the bills. They should be rolling up their sleeves and putting in the hours needed not just to rule on whatever government employees want to add to our spending but also to examine every continuing expenditure to see whether there might be a less expensive way to accomplish almost the same thing, if it’s needed at all.

Fancy folks have a name for this. It’s called zero-based budgeting. For the rest of us, it’s simple. Now is not the time for elected officials to casually spend a few minutes giving thumbs up or thumbs down to requests for new funding but to actually work to make sure every cent they spend on our behalf provides the payback we have every right to expect and demand.

— ERIC MEYER