Should government have any ideas or just look at the bottom line?

By BILL CHAISSON
By Bill Chaisson

I am still troubled by the approach to budgeting taken by the Sullivan County Delegation. It approved a budget on Friday that was slightly larger than last year’s, but translated into a lower tax rate because the executive financial committee of the delegation chose to supplement local revenue with federal revenue in order to give local taxpayers a break. Why is it the job of elected officials to appease taxpayers? Is it government’s job to support each taxpayer’s self-interest or is it about furthering the common good?

There are two very different views of the role of government in the United States. One group of elected officials apparently believes that because they are put in office by the voter, they should do exactly what the voters want them to do (except when special interest groups want something different). This is apparently somebody’s idea of “democracy.”

Another group of elected officials begins with the idea that this is a republic and that when they are elected to office they are there to represent the best interests of their constituents. This does not always mean doing what a majority of their constituents “tell them to do.” It means showing leadership.

Somewhat ironically, it tends to be Republicans who take the more ostensibly democratic view and Democrats who take the more republican view. At the county budget hearing last Friday, the chair of the county delegation, Rep. Steve Smith, a Republican from Charlestown stated his philosophical position with admirable bluntness. “We don’t do ideas. We do line items.” Smith feels that it is up to members of the public to bring ideas to government officials and that elected officials should have just one idea: keep taxes down.

Smith’s comments were in response to questions from Rep. Lee Oxenham, a Democrat from Plainfield. Oxenham suggested that some of the federal money be used to help out Claremont; she said she had read of the financial setbacks at the school and in city government. Smith said that there had been no requests for help from that quarter.

Oxenham also suggested that funding could go toward improving the transportation corridor between Claremont and job opportunities in the Upper Valley or installing electric car charging stations in Newport. Smith said that no funding requests were turned down for those projects. (In fact, $50,000 was allocated to improve bus service.)

Interestingly, Sullivan County Commissioner Ben Nelson, a Republican from Newport, came down somewhere between Oxenham and Smith. County commissioners do not make the budget; they are the stewards of what is budgeted by the delegation. Consequently, they are familiar with the revenue and expenditures, but have little control over the bottom line. Last Friday, Nelson opined that he would have preferred that the tax rate be kept flat rather than it being cut. He would have liked the difference to have been put into the capital reserve fund to renovate the county health care facility.

Oxenham’s government is an active planner on behalf of the populace. Smith’s government is a passive servant of individual self-interest. Nelson’s government is a careful steward of what the county is duty bound to maintain. One can see in this spectrum of philosophical outlooks the essence of representative democracy. It is obviously better to have a balance of these viewpoints rather than a preponderance of any one of them.

Too many active planners might overspend and create public debt. Too many passive servants might starve the government to the point where it could not fulfill its basic responsibilities. Too many careful stewards might stagnate the government, keeping it solvent, but missing opportunities to spend proactively.

Winston S. Churchill seems to be quoted often lately as we publicly debate the state of American democracy. “Democracy is the worst of form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time …,” he said on the floor of the House of Commons in 1947. What is so aggravating about democracy?

For one thing, elected officials have to serve alongside people who have quite different political philosophies than their own. And, as outlined above, that is actually what you’re aiming for: to be in the same room with people with whom you are going to constantly disagree. Democracy takes the bromide “two heads are better than one” to the nth degree.

Following on this truism about democracy is the fact that in this form of government nothing is ever really over and done, decided, put in a drawer, and let’s not worry about that anymore. Just doesn’t happen. Why? New people get elected to office and bring in new ideas. People already in office learn something new and want to revise existing law. A democracy is a bit like a teenager: always curious about new things and always broadening its horizons, never standing still or being simply satisfied with what it’s got. And as we all know, teenagers are both wonderful and a bit aggravating in their wild mixture of idealism and empiricism. “I know you’ve always done it this way,” they’ll say, “but what if …?”

All this is to say that I think the balance on our county delegation is weighted a bit far over toward the passive servant school of thought. Certainly the executive financial committee seems primarily interested in catering to the self-interest of individual taxpayers rather than investing in the future of collective good of the people who live in Sullivan County. Nelson believes they skimped on setting aside reserve funds. Oxenham believes they could have given a shot in the arm to economic opportunity. They didn’t do either of those things. They reduced the property tax rate by 11 cents.

Bill Chaisson is editor of the Eagle Times.