Here in Minnesota, we talk about budget cuts affecting schools, libraries, children's health care and bridge maintenance.
The solution, some tell us, is to reallocate money spent on frills and low priorities to those government services that obviously benefit more people. It's pure coincidence that this happens to mean redirecting funds to benefit drivers, not transit users, to whites, not blacks, and the wealthy, not the poor.
Still, we are fortunate in this state, where investment in ourselves is still relatively generous and government has neither devolved into crony-seeking graft nor seed-corn-consuming parsimony. Yet.
From the west, that sparse land with the big sunsets — where mining and oil revenues and public lands grazing and the legacy of federal public works projects obscure the real sources of individual prosperity — we can get inklings of what happens when self-interest begins to triumph over the common interest.
This is actually a small example, from Spokane, Washington, and I expect a lot of friends on the right may ridicule it. You decide what it means.
Budget cuts in Spokane have reduced all types of low priority services. Some of the things missing, like snow plowing within three days of a snowfall, become apparent only occasionally, and eventually, the snow does melt. Others remain invisible until a citizen finally takes note.
Two newer residents walking past their local fire station wondered, what station is this? Back in Minnesota, fire stations had signs. Here, the building was nondescript. If not for a swatch of red, behind the high bay doors might be dump trucks or bookmobiles.
In a nation where you might find a million dollars worth of NYFD tee shirts walking around as testament to public sacrifice, a community would not spring for a sign for the fire department that actually protected its lives and property.
And why would the fire department need a sign? It comes to us, we don't come to it. Clearly a waste of taxpayer dollars to put a name on a place when most of us already know where it is.
The couple inquired, and when they learned the dollars for a sign were not a priority, they offered to pay for one. The bureaucracy didn't quite know how to handle such a proposal, but the local station house was energized. Some of our neighbors truly appreciate what we do, what we take pride in and dedicate our lives to.
The department higher ups are now mulling the offer.
Individual underwriting public expenditures might enflame the heart of a Minnesota governor who once invited citizens to send in a check if they didn't like the way the state was spending its money. Perhaps we could privatize all sorts of spending and move it off the books.
Get Coca Cola and Twin City Federal to underwrite bridge inspections. Gang members, turn in your guns at Target for a free gift card. Ask neighbors not just to shovel fire hydrants clear in the winter but to buy defibrillators for their local fire station. After all, why should young people underwrite the cost when it's the old farts having heart attacks?
A signless fire station in Spokane might be seen as an example of the right priorities, but from here it looks like a symbol of a community losing its grip.
If a sign goes up on station number 11, we'll let you know. If it doesn't, who's even gonna notice?
