Category: State

Biting the Subsidizing Hand

Post author By David
Post date November 29, 2007
No Comments on Biting the Subsidizing Hand

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A local example of the negative effect of subsidies is playing out right now. Lehi citizens have been paying taxes to support services that benefit people in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. The result is that the people in those cities are unaware of the real costs of the services that many of them take for granted in Lehi. It sounds like they are about to find out what those costs really are.

Saratoga Springs’s commitment to a proposed freeway through Lehi appears to have cost its residents access to Lehi community programs.

Call it retaliation or tough love, Lehi is moving to make it expensive and harder for Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs residents to join community programs, or even be buried, in Lehi.

Lehi Councilman Johnny Barnes gave a letter to Lehi Council members on Tuesday asking that beginning Jan. 1, participation in all community programs “be restricted to Lehi citizens first.”

Residents from nearby communities may be invited to participate if there is space, but “the costs to those participants will reflect the actual cost of the programs,” said Barnes.

Council members instructed staff to begin figuring new fees and participation rules for the council to consider.

Councilman Stephen Holbrook said the day has come for Lehi to make recreation fees for nonresidents “extremely higher, so our citizens can have first choice” and that increase should extend not only to sports programs but library use, senior citizen programs, park rentals, the literacy center, and burial fees.

“Two weeks ago in a pre-council meeting there were comments made concerning a letter sent out by Mayor Tim Parker of Saratoga Springs indicating their strong support of UDOT’s (freeway) plan for 2100 North,” Barnes wrote in his letter to council members. “I stated that in my opinion, this was a clear demonstration of Saratoga coming of age as a city, and felt that if they want to be a city, they need to act like a city.

“In making this statement, I hold firmly to the opinion that along with having the right to take a strong aggressive position comes the right and obligation to provide services to their citizens. This would include all services, not just the ones that are convenient to them or are able to be funded.”

How did this all come about?

Well Lehi has been very accommodating of the burgeoning cities to the west and now that because of that our city council is very aware of the costs of the services that they are virtually giving away. Though this act may be seen as retaliation by some, it makes sense that we should not be too concerned about the costs of restricting access to our programs for people who are apparently uninterested in the costs we will suffer as a result of their preferred freeway.

It’s all a matter of perspective but Saratoga Springs does not appear to care about the Lehi perspective on this project. I recognize that there are aspects of the Mountain View Corridor project that Saratoga would have a perspective that would be lacking in Lehi, but if those cities want to leech off of the programs that have matured here in Lehi then they should be willing to work with us.

The mayor of Saratoga could not be ignorant of Lehi’s vocal concern over the 2100 North alignment preferred by UDOT. If he cared about them then he should have made a better case for why Lehi’s 4800 North proposal was inferior. Everything I have seen suggests that 2100 North is marginally better for anyone who is just passing through Lehi than the plan proposed by Lehi, but it is substantially worse for residents of Lehi.

Tags community, issues, Lehi, subsidies, transportation

State

Utah Legislative Tenure

First I would like to thank Steve Urquhart for his comments. And in case anyone got the wrong impression, I had no intention to spar with Steve over this issue or single him out. I respect Rep. Urquhart for his openness on this and many other issues. He has convincingly demonstrated his honest belief that “sunlight [is] the best disinfectant.” The major reason that I singled him out is that I know that he is one member of the legislature that understands the value of blogging discussions.

All that being said, this post is mainly some of my further findings after his comments to my previous post. He said that term limits came in a wave in 1994, but it would be more accurate to say that 1994 was the tail end of the wave. 15 states enacted term limits before 1994, 3 more (including Utah) did so in 1994, and 3 have enacted term limits since 1994. Of the 6 states that have repealed their term limit laws (that’s 28% of states that had such laws), it appears that none of those laws ever lasted long enough to limit the term of any legislator. No state where term limits actually started limiting terms has gone back. My assessment would be that Utah retreated from that legislation prematurely.

The second part of Steve’s response was quite enlightening:

Of course, I realize that people can, and will, argue that we just want to hold the offices for life. That’s their right, and for some legislators it might be true. But people should consider the average lifespan of a legislator. In the House (largely through self-selection), it is right around 4 years. (I heard that number and have never independently verified it; but, it seems accurate. I’ve been there 7 years, and there aren’t many Reps who’ve been there longer than I have).

Since he had not verified the 4 year average I went to the website for the Utah Legislature (a very good site, by the way) and did some quick checking on the 75 members of the house and all 29 senators. In the Senate the mean term length is 7 years with an average of 6.93 so by the time we next have elections the average term will be sitting at 8 years (the longest current term being 18). 14 of the 29 have served between 3 and 7 years, most of the other 15 have served more than 7 years.

In the House, where Steve serves, the mean length of current consecutive service is 5 years with an average of about 5.2 so the average will be 6 years before we next vote. The are a number of representatives who have served 3 years or less consecutively who have previously served in the House, sometimes for more than a decade. If we factor in lifetime service for these representatives the average goes up to nearly 5.5 years. About 70% of the members of the house have served no longer than Steve, although there are many who have served 7 years like he has.

It is comforting to see that we have a pretty good rate of turnover in our state and I hope that it stays that way. So long as we have consistent turnover I think we need to focus more on correcting the imbalance of power between the major parties – as Obi wan had suggested – at least here in Utah.

Tags issues, numbers, term limits

State

Term Limits

I asked what people were interested in and the interest seemed to be term limits. I decided to do some initial research and found a good resource on term limits. The states that currently have term limits are:

ARIZONA
ARKANSAS
CALIFORNIA
COLORADO
FLORIDA
LOUISIANA
MAINE
MICHIGAN
MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEBRASKA
NEVADA
OHIO
OKLAHOMA
SOUTH DAKOTA

In addition I was surprised to find that Utah was on a short list of states where term limits had been enacted and later repealed.

IDAHO
MASSACHUSETTS
OREGON
UTAH
WASHINGTON
WYOMING

A little more digging and I learned that Utah enacted term limits by statute in 1994 (just before I was paying close attention to politics) and repealed them in 2003 before they ever affected any legislators (the limit was 12 years and the statute only lasted for 9). So now we know that our Utah legislature is not anxious to limit themselves.

Now I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in the states with term limits. Jason has voiced his unqualified support of the limits in his state. Does anyone else want to share? Are there any opinions on lifetime bans versus limits of consecutive years of service? I am not ready to choose sides on that yet.

I would also be interested to know more about the decision to end limits before they began in Utah. Perhaps Steve Urqhart might have some insights there that he would share (hint – information from 2003, or hints on where to get some would be nice because my short search led to a bunch of dead links).

Tags connections, issues, questions, term limits

State

Step Forward on Education

There has been lots of talk since November 6th about moving on to improve education after the defeat of vouchers. People on both sides of that debate have talked about working together towards a common goal. I have been happy with the tone of talk, but I have wondered what is the next concrete step that we can approach to demonstrate our genuine interest in improving education. After reading The People Have Spoken, and Fans and Foes Vow to Work for Change I have had an idea of where to take a next step.

I’ve never heard a credible argument against merit-pay or performance-based pay for teachers. Does this mean that I have not heard enough discussion on the subject or is it evidence that this might be an area where people who want to improve education can agree? I think that an effort to bring performance-based pay for our teachers would make a great demonstration of our commitment to making changes to improve our education system.

Tags Education, issues

culture National State technology

The Government Hammer

My father-in-law is known for saying, “When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Thomas Sowell talks about political crises created by Political “Solutions.”

Government laws and policies, especially the Community Reinvestment Act, pressured lenders to invest in people and places where they would not invest otherwise. Government also created the temporarily very low interest rates that made the mortgages seem affordable for the moment. . .

As for the flames sweeping across southern California, tragic as that is, this has happened time and again before — in the very same places in the very same time of year, just like hurricanes.

Why would people risk building million-dollar homes in the known paths of wildfires? For the same reason that people choose to live in the known paths of hurricanes. Because the government — that is, the taxpayers — will get stuck with a lot of the costs of dealing with those dangers and the costs of rebuilding.

Why is there such a huge amount of inflammable vegetation over such a wide area that fires can reach unstoppable proportions by the time they get to places where people live? Because “open space” has become a political sacred cow beyond rational discussion. . .

In other words, government preserves all the conditions for wildfires and subsidizes people who live in their path.

As for water shortages . . . The federal government’s water projects supply much of the water used in California that enables agriculture to flourish in what would otherwise be a desert.

We have created a culture where government is the solution to every every social “problem” (many times government is used to address preferences like open space which are not actually problems) just as technology is the solution to every technical problem. Lawmakers don’t intend to create crises, but crisis is the natural result when government gets involved in things that it was not designed to address (things like the cost of water or the price of home loans). In other words, if you have a hammer everything may look like a nail, but no matter how skillfully you hammer on a screw it won’t work like a screw – you need a screw driver to succeed with screws.

Tags economics, media, thoughts

State

Missing the Mark

I was gone for most of yesterday so today I saw the mail I got yesterday including a voucher mailing “Who’s opinion do you trust?” On the pro-voucher side they list four prominent state and national Republicans and on the anti-voucher side they list four prominent national Democrats.

I looked at the list of Republicans and 3 of the 4 I completely don’t trust (nor do they represent my values). Not much better than the 4 out of 4 that I don’t trust of the Democrats they showed. That’s hardly going to make me vote for vouchers.

Tags media, vouchers

State

Get Vouchers Right Next Time

Post author By David
Post date October 31, 2007
18 Comments on Get Vouchers Right Next Time

It’s not often that I get to see Utah featured in a nationally syndicated column about a positive policy debate. Usually when Utah makes the national news it’s for things like a mine disaster, raging wildfires, or polygamy. Today John Stossel wrote about the voucher issue in Utah. Naturally he is in favor of vouchers – like I am, but the Utah legislature was kind enough to give us such a bad proposal that it’s a no-win situation for those who favor parental choice. It’s easy for people outside of Utah to say “take the leap and give parents more options” but those of us inside Utah who have studied the issue know that it’s not that clear-cut.

If we get vouchers (which does not look very likely right now) we will have a poor implementation that will be used to ridicule the idea elsewhere while we pay the price for our mistakes. If we vote against Referendum 1 – as I plan to – our votes will be painted as opposition to parental choice.

Let me clear up the message of the vote I will cast next week on this. I am in favor of parental choice and I think that vouchers can be a useful vehicle to encourage parental choice but HB148 and HB174 do not make for a good implementation of vouchers. I hope that their defeat next week will not discourage those who want more parental choice. I hope instead that it will force them to come up with a much better solution. Besides learning something about crafting good law, they can also learn something about engaging in shady politics. Parents for Choice in Education should clean up their act or be shunned. They need to do a much better job at defending the issue if they are involved and they need to avoid the political trickery that is more a smear on them than a strategy for changing public opinion.

Tags dirty politics, media, position

State

Turning a Corner

I have been a vocal supporter of vouchers previously, but I have been less than pleased with some of the tactics of those behind vouchers. My support was wavering because of my displeasure but then as I stared at the conclusion of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Report that vouchers would be draining more than 40 million dollars per year once all students have become eligible for them I realized the magnitude of the flaws in our current voucher laws. In my opinion, that’s too much of a drain for an experiment. I also firmly believe that it’s much harder to change a law once it is implemented than it is to just let 40 million dollars get siphoned off from our state budget each year.

Between that financial drain and the gutter-politics associated with voucher support I can not support Referendum 1 in good conscience. I still support the idea of vouchers, and would be supportive of future efforts to implement a better implementation later. Good suggestions include using tax credits or requiring that students attend a minimum amount of time in public school before accepting vouchers. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have one answer – I have to vote “no” on Referendum 1 in November.

Tags Education, issues, position, State, vouchers

Local State

Returning to the MVC

Things have been somewhat quiet on the MountainView Corridor issue until just before they released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). As soon as it was out I went to take a look at what the draft EIS said. For those who have been interested in the issue before there is nothing particularly surprising (from what I have seen so far – I’m not sure I’ll ever read all the pages in this 5 volume report).

I just wanted to put a link to the actual report in case anyone is interested in more than the newspaper analysis (actually there’s no analysis so far, just reports of the release) of what is in the draft EIS. I am encouraged by the statements within the EIS explaining the efforts of Lehi city to propose a better plan, and specifically the acknowledgment that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has not identified a preferred alternative and that UDOT and FHWA are considering the necessity of releasing a supplemental EIS once they have had a chance to more carefully study the 4800 N freeway alternative proposed by Lehi city.

I plan to use this public comment period to voice my position to UDOT, but also to encourage discussion of the issue here – I’d love to hear what others think about this plan.

Tags community, issues, planning, State, transportation

National State

State vs Federal

Today is not the first time that I have heard this argument:

Ronald Reagan is not running this year. Then again, even before he was president, Reagan did not live up to the standard of President Reagan. . . He enacted tax increases and expanded abortion rights when he was governor of California. Yet conservatives now rightfully recognize him as one of the greatest presidents in our country’s history.

The difference today was that a new thought struck me – we should expect differences in what a candidate will do in a federal position compared to what they might have taken in state offices. These two levels of government are different and serve different roles. Our states are not meant to mimic the federal government – they are meant to serve functions in our lives which have not been (and often should not be) addressed at the federal level.

Not only are those levels of government different but no state is an accurate reflection of the nation as a whole in all areas of policy. Our government is – and should be – a reflection of the people it governs; when those people differ so should their government. We rightly expect different solutions to come from Arizona than we would find in Delaware.

Tags government, thoughts