Government must change
A growing effort by local business leaders to look for ways that government can do more with less is not new or revolutionary, but it is welcome.
From the years of the Great Depression through the boom years of the 1950s and '60s it was a matter of routine for one or another of various committees of the Chamber of Commerce to render its opinion on municipal or school budgets or on tax issues placed before the voters. They not only gave advice, but often their strong support.
Over the years, however, the degree to which civic and business organizations functioned as watchdogs varied and sometimes waned. Even worse, voters became complacent.
Government thrives on apathy; it becomes fat and happy.
Thus some of the statistics that were revealed Friday at a meeting of the Business-Led Development Group of the Mahoning Valley. Over a 20-year period, the population in Mahoning and Trumbull counties fell by 7 percent, but local government jobs increased by 17 percent. And while private employment pay during that period increased 59 percent per job, the pay for government employees increased at more than twice that rate, by 124 percent
By those figures, a private employment job that paid 20,000 in 1984 increased to 32,800 in 2004. But a 20,000 government job increased to 44,800 over the same period.
The effect
Taxpayers were just keeping up with inflation, while public employees were passing them up in jobs created, wages earned and fringes enjoyed.
Obviously, this pattern cannot be sustained.
We can already hear some regular readers of this column clucking their tongues, given that just days ago we voiced our editorial support for renewal of Mahoning County's half-percent sales tax.
Just starve the beast, they will say. But the taxpayers need most of the services that government and the schools supply; the problem is that those services are not being provided in the most cost-efficient manner. Catastrophic cuts in income -- which is what a loss of more than a quarter of its general fund income would be to Mahoning County -- don't promote good government. They paralyze it.
More consolidation of services, fewer public employees, and wages and fringe benefits that more closely mirror the private sector are necessary. The area's business interests recognize this. Public employees will be inclined to resist it. Voters must make it clear to their elected officials that the time for change is now. Politicians who don't recognize that will have to find another line of work.