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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 > May > 29
Friday, May 29, 2009
Martin Gottlieb: Train depot issue offers break from the bleak
There’s something a little odd, isn’t there, about the fact that, in these times of the worst economy in memory, Dayton is starting to argue about where to put two stations in a publicly funded passenger rail system that doesn’t exist yet, hasn’t been fully designed and hasn’t been funded.
Jobs disappear left and right. Governments cut back on services. Charities go begging, so to speak. And yet we’re apparently getting a new train system from Cincinnati to Cleveland, though we have managed to live without one these past four decades.
Seems odd. To some, it seems a lot worse than odd.
Some politicians in Columbus have opposed the whole train idea on the grounds that this is no time to be pouring big public money into an iffy venture that the state has never seen the merits of before. They have said that, considering that more people are out of work than ever — and more are expected to be out of work in the near future — and even employed people are cutting back on their spending, because of fears for the future, governments need to do the same.
The thing is, though, the whole idea of building the train system right now is that all those people are out of work. Here’s a project that will put some of them to work, and will leave the state with an asset it didn’t have before.
If all goes according to plan, and the federal government puts up all the money for construction, then the project should actually help the state government’s coffers. It will make taxpayers out of people who might otherwise need government help.
Works for me. We might as well get something good out of this mess we’re in. The Great Depression of the 1930s resulted in a lot of terrific public works projects that otherwise would not have been done. That seemed odd, too, at the time, and still does. But it’s true.
Yes, it’s deficit spending — big time, if you count everything in the federal stimulus package, which is funding the train project. I’ve spent decades denouncing in these pages deficit spending that was much lower. But what seemed so awful back then — still does — was habitual, huge deficit spending in relatively good times, in the absence of any national emergency.
Well, here we have something like an emergency. Deficit spending got us through the Depression and World War II. It’s a reasonable tool now.
So we might as well take advantage of one upside in this downturn and luxuriate in actually having options, nothing to be taken for granted these days.
The idea of a stop at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force has a lot of appeal. That’s easily Dayton’s best tourist attraction, and a short cab ride to other action. Public transit connections could develop to other aviation-related sites and more.
Riverside was denuded long ago of much of its potentially developable land (and potential tax base) by annexation by Dayton. And it failed in its attempt in 2007 to get income tax money out of some civilian employees at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, much of which now goes to suburbs where the employees live. The town is struggling hard, and it deserves this kind of break.
But the use of an old railway site in West Carrollton makes a lot of sense, too. For south suburbanites, the idea of trips into Cincinnati will have a lot of appeal, all the more so if a station is convenient.
Other possible sites — Fairborn, for access to Wright State University and Wright-Patt, for example — are worth considering, too, besides the one that would presumably go downtown. All these have been put forth. More might be.
If train travel becomes popular, what could happen, with time, is the development of, say, three local stops, with only one or two being used by any given train.
In time, perhaps, competition for the stations will take unfortunate turns. For now though, best to embrace that oddity in these times: an actual upside.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Economy, Martin Gottlieb, Suburban Communities, Transportation
Editorial: Impact of military hiring plan all depends on execution
If you’ve followed the news through the last several American wars, you know that contractors are playing a bigger role in Iraq than they’ve played before. They perform military or quasi-military functions but don’t wear the uniform of their country. They aren’t even Pentagon employees.
You hear about them all the time — as providers of security, transporters of goods, victims of violence, perpetrators of alleged misbehavior that has angered the locals. They have come in very handy for an American government that is trying to limit the number of uniformed Americans in Iraq but hasn’t worried much about how much the war costs.
Contractors have been playing a larger role in military matters stateside, too, including at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. In the 1990s, the government sought to reduce the number of federal employees. In a period of relative peace, the goal of limiting military spending was widespread. And it wasn’t just that decade. After 1999, in the field of acquisitions, Air Force employees — civilian and uniformed — dropped by about 20 percent.
After 9/1l, the George W. Bush administration took to using contractors for new programs in record numbers. Now the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. President Barack Obama says the days of “giving defense contractors a blank check are over.” He says the weapons contracting system has “gone amok.”
Complaints are widespread about cost overruns and delays on big projects. Emblematic of the latter has been the ugly battle between Northrop Grumman and Boeing over a contract to build the Air Forces tanker (for refueling airborne aircraft). It has been going on, roughly speaking, forever.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided that the contracting habit is out of hand. He wants to hire more people — 20,000 — and reduce contracting out to pre-Bush levels.
Other reform proposals are out there, too. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chair of the Armed Services Committee, has proposed, for example, having somebody other than the Pentagon make estimates for Congress as to how much a particular system will cost.
Sen. Levin, Sen. John McCain (the top Republican on the committee) and the president are going in roughly the same direction. Ohio Sen. George Voinovich has also bought into the idea of more employees and fewer contractors. He comes at the issue as an expert on federal staffing issues, having long focused on that unglamorous subject.
How this will all play out for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base isn’t known. The Dayton-area economy is not necessarily either a big winner or loser, being home to both contractors and federal employees.
It all depends on execution. As Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, of the House Armed Services Committee, notes, the Pentagon needs to make sure it hires enough people and pays enough to get the best.
Nobody knows how many employees of contractors will end up filling federal jobs. Certainly, many contractors are dedicated, experienced people who have done excellent work for the government.
The people promoting the Gates direction are acknowledging that many of the hires might be people already doing the same work. They note that it’s not about the people, but about the system, its structure and cost.
A new system will not be designed from scratch, of course. But just altering a system that handles $200 billion a year and deals in complicated technology is monumentally complicated. The transition will presumably be bumpy.
If there was ever a case of the devil being in the details, this is it.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
