You may have read that the Chattanooga City Council approved a contract to redesign the city’s website. The contract is for $128,000.
Perhaps the redesign of the site is necessary, and as complicated as technology can be, we don’t doubt that the work will be expensive. But what drew our attention more than the price tag was the source of the funding. Nearly half of the money for the contract – $60,000 – will come from a federal grant.
Chattanooga clearly needs an effective, eye-catching website. It can help attract tourists and potential businesses, so it is a justified expense. But if the federal government is helping pay for cities’ obviously local websites, it seems to us that there is hardly anything the federal government does not feel entitled to do.
We see nothing in the Constitution that authorizes Congress to provide funding for strictly local projects. In fact, federal power is limited by the 10th Amendment, which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Congress should abide by those wise words today.