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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > April > 28
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Martin Gottlieb: Warren flap over stimulus is all about the posturing
Let’s talk about Warren County rejecting some stimulus money. What a bunch of phony, silly posturing, both at home and in Washington.
The $373,000 would have been used mainly to replace vans the county now has in place to give people rides they call ahead for.
Says county Commissioner C. Michael Kilburn, “All I want the government to do is leave Warren County alone. If we need something, we’ll take care of it, and we’ll buy it.”
But if the federal government left Warren County alone, there would probably be no van fleet to replace. The current vans were 80 percent paid for by the feds. That’s the usual deal on local transit vehicles.
All that’s happening now is the feds are offering this one-time deal whereby they’ll pick up the other 20 percent, too.
The stimulus money would replace vans that will have to be replaced soon enough anyway, and the county would get vans that need less upkeep than the old ones and are probably more fuel-efficient, saving the county more money.
Sounds like a pretty good deal. That’s why the county staff applied for the money. It was the obvious thing to do, in behalf of the county’s taxpayers.
No other county has turned down any stimulus money coming through the Ohio Department of Transportation.
But the commission voted unanimously to not accept the money.
One commissioner, Kilburn, is reportedly against accepting any stimulus money. You’ve probably heard his theatrical line: “I’ll let Warren County go broke before taking any of Obama’s filthy money.”
But the other two commissioners, Pat South and David Young, are taking stimulus offers one at a time. They’re saying that road work or other such infrastructure help might be OK.
By the way, the other projects being talked about look much bigger than $373,000. If some of the posturing by the commission looks a bit odd, enter Congress to top it.
Republican U.S. Reps. Mike Turner and Jean Schmidt, who represent Warren County, cheered on by Republican House leader John Boehner, a neighbor, have submitted legislation to “rescind” the $373,000 from stimulus package that Congress has passed, thereby supposedly using the money to reduce the federal deficit.
Never mind that Congress and the president have already specifically decided to spend a certain amount of money — $787 billion, of which the $373,000 is part — on the stimulus, and have not changed their minds, near as anyone knows.
Never mind that the $373,000 has already been slated for use elsewhere by ODOT, the conduit from Washington.
Never mind that $373,000 is one two-millionth of $787 billion, which would fall even below the official definition of symbolic if there were such a definition.
Never mind that whether Warren County needs this money is irrelevant to the question of whether the money should be spent.
Warren is a fortunate county. It has not had to make the cutbacks in programs and staffs that have characterized local government in so many other places in this recession.
So the stimulus money should be concentrated elsewhere. But imagine the flap if the feds didn’t offer help to the affluent, solidly Republican counties that border metropolitan areas: Washington would be accused of trying to reward the Democratic counties and bribe the swing counties.
Sometimes, when Republicans bash the stimulus, that is exactly the charge they make about it: that it’s an effort to reward political friends. Some even call the process “filthy.”
The “rescind” idea is partly a smokescreen. It’s designed to get the county commissioners out from under the charge that they are sending perfectly good money to another county.
Kilburn has scoffed at the proposal, but the other two commissioners are on board, saying the stimulus involves too much borrowing, too big a burden on future generations.
They’d look better if they just said the money could be better used by somebody else, because that’s what’s going to happen.
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