Hamilton County government and the public school system that is financially linked to it are, once again, dealing with limited budgets. There's nothing new about this or how elected officials tend to respond. They always say they do not have the funds they "need." Actually, what they do not have is the funds they want, not necessarily the funds they need. But they do have, and always will have, all the funds there are to have.
Want and need are not the same thing, but they can be balanced if the whole reflexive idea of "need" is put aside in favor of a more useful way of looking at budgets. To get to the right place, we think the right questions have to be asked.
Let's start with the fact that fiscal pressures are a signal. They tell elected officials that it is time to ask if some local government project is being done only because it has always been done. What would happen if it were no longer done? Equally, if it has to be continued, does that mean it has to be produced by an agency of local government? Government, including public education, can be provided by government without being produced by government. The distinction between provision and production is the first step toward getting budget problems under close analysis.
Take a look at costs as if government were a private, for-profit producer of services. The accounting rules used by government and the private sector are not the same. Private-sector accounting puts the market value of productive resources used to produce a good or service in the light. Government accounting does not.
Once real costs are discovered, local governments may be able to provide services through competitive contracting, even when traditional government departments are allowed to offer competitive bids to keep work "in house." The final decision to continue in house or with outside contractors rests with those elected to make such decisions.
Budget stress can be put to good use. But in some American cities it has not only been ignored but dismissed as irrelevant. Now those places, once thriving and safe, essentially are dangerous and dead.
Detroit, once the nation's richest city, addressed its budget issues in the early 1960s by taxing and spending more. Those expected to pay the higher taxes cast the decisive vote; they "voted with their feet." Detroit had hit the tax wall. Its fate was not ordained, it was chosen.
Stockton, California, and Harrisburg, Pa., are in similar straits. What these failed cities have in common is that they refused to ask the right questions when they still had time to do what the correct answers would have empowered them to do.
Hamilton County and Chattanooga are top-rated places to do business. Good! But so were Detroit and Stockton at one time. They ignored reality. We believe our elected officials can be better than that. The end is nowhere near for Hamilton and Chattanooga; but it may be possible to see it from here.