County commissioners obviously aren’t concerned about selecting an interim county mayor by a flawed process that essentially flouts the public’s interest. But they at least should care about the result. If they choose today to continue along the divided path they’ve been on, they are likely to end up giving county taxpayers an interim mayor who would take office on a split vote, who would have no mandate, and who would likely preside over a government of timidity. That’s the last thing the county needs.
The County Commission’s two top candidates – County Commissioner Jim Coppinger and Mike Carter, a special assistant to outgoing County Mayor Claude Ramsey for most of the past year – are essentially already committed to timid, cautious government. Both promised at an independent public forum Monday night, for example, that they would not raise county property taxes to shore up the county budget. Indeed, they said they would cut public services before they would raise taxes.
That’s become a standard refrain for politicians nowadays, of course. But for them to make that kneejerk pledge as a matter of course before they know (or admit knowing) what the next two years will bring is telling. It suggests that they are willing to go into office in a very dicey economic period with the most vital option for sustaining crucial public services off the table, regardless of whatever needs may occur. And it suggests that they would handle other tough issues in a similarly timid and defensive fashion.
The county’s recent fiscal history and current state and local budget issues offer some pertinent perspective on the tough fiscal circumstance. County government has raised taxes just twice since 1999, each time for just a modest 26 cents. The proceeds of all of the first tax increase (in 2005) and most of the second (in 2007) went to the school portion of the tax base, leaving county services and personnel existing on an increasingly lean base.
With the expiration this year of the wrongly maligned federal stimulus funds, state government will face an effective loss in revenue of around $1 billion, leaving it in the tightest pinch in many years. The timing makes it worse: November’s elections installed a newly monolithic and cut-happy crowd of tea-party-beholden Republican legislators whose promised spending cuts will fall most harshly on county governments.