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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 > 2011 > March > 20 > Entry
Ellen Belcher: B-creek, RTA dust-up is case study of what’s wrong
John Kasich would have learned something important about local government in Ohio if he had been at the Beavercreek City Council meeting this week.
On March 14, the city council put off for a second time a decision about whether to allow the Greater Dayton RTA to build three bus stops near the Fairfield Commons mall. The discussion was a thinly veiled conversation about whether Beavercreek could keep RTA bus riders out of the community.
Should RTA be required to heat and air-condition the open-air shelter, the mayor asked. What if a new crosswalk or stop light had to be installed?
Why should Beavercreek citizens pay for that, considering that council is already asking voters in May to raise their taxes for police protection, another member asked.
Talk about small questions. Talk about parochialism.
Where’s the understanding that Beavercreek is a piece of something larger — a region that sinks or swims together?
The incident would have been instructive for the governor because it’s a measure of how difficult it will be to get local governments to buy into being part of something bigger, to get them to grant that Ohio has too many governments.
The state has 251 cities, 681 villages, 1,308 townships and 88 counties. This obscene balkanization — besides costing money — encourages myopic ways of thinking and doing business.
Beavercreek’s meeting was held the night before Kasich unveiled his two-year budget that proposes to cut the Local Government Fund by almost 50 percent. Townships, financially strapped big cities and rural counties would be hit especially hard. Many would have to stop doing some things (think trash pick-up); scale back services they can’t get out of providing (think police and fire); raise taxes; or all of the above.
(The Local Government Fund has been around since 1934, and it subsidizes cities, counties and townships on the grounds that not all communities have the same ability to tax themselves. In some places, the population is so small or so poor, or there are so few businesses that there’s just not enough wealth to tax.)
The governor’s goal with the proposed cuts is to force governmental consolidation, or failing that, to drive cost-cutting by encouraging local governments to contract out for services.
What Beavercreek’s dust-up with RTA shows is just how uneager communities are to think beyond their own back yards. Yes, a traffic light would cost Beavercreek a few bucks. But wouldn’t it be far better for the wider community if people in Montgomery County who need — or choose — to ride public transportation could apply for jobs in and near the mall and also shop there?
And how about the mall employers and Kettering Health Network (once its hospital is built) whose managers have to ask job applicants, “Do you have transportation?”
Wouldn’t they get something out of RTA extending its service? Shouldn’t Beavercreek be grateful that the RTA is willing to use sales tax money generated in Montgomery County to supply workers to Greene County?
Beavercreek can afford to be an island. Even when the day finally comes that it has to pass an income tax — because people don’t want to keep increasing their property taxes to pay for roads and police protection — its affluence will see it through.
But for places like Xenia, Fairborn, and — crossing over into Montgomery County — Dayton, Trotwood, Jefferson Twp. and even Huber Heights, raising taxes isn’t such an easy option. It’s in communities like this that Kasich’s cudgel — his Local Government Fund budget cuts — would be brutal.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that all the state laws that encourage government fragmentation and that pit local governments against each other were eliminated tomorrow. The governments that would come together quickest are the ones that bring the most needs and the least money to the table. The “haves” can afford to keep going it alone.
As for the “have-not” governments, concentrating the poor and consolidating the financially weakest communities isn’t a formula for making Ohio a better or cheaper place to live. If the state, as a whole, is going to reduce local taxes (and spending) through sharing services regionally and through consolidation, Kasich has to spend political capital telling affluent communities that their income taxes and property taxes are part of the problem, too — even if they can afford to keep paying them.
Consolidation and sharing services is a lot like insurance. It only works if the pool isn’t just composed of people who need a doctor.
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