Can Lakewood Survive The Age of Budushism?

[Bill Call]

The new Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Armand Budish, has chosen regionalism as one of his first priorities:

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/st ... 2#continue

Budish believes that regionalizing fire departments, garbage collection and other government services might offer some cost savings. Budish has proposed withholding State school funding from urban areas unless they agree to join a State run purchasing cooperative and agree to abide by the results of a yet to be started study of regionalization of government services.

The Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association is already engaged in secret negotiations over a regionalization plan.

Proponents of regionalism cite three main reasons for regional government: (my numbers are based on 2006 tax date)

1. Tax sharing. They like to cite the unfair distribution of income tax revenue as a burden on the City of Cleveland and some of the inner ring suburbs. The fact is that the City of Cleveland has about 33% of Cuyahoga County’s population and collects about 40% of the local income taxes. When Mayor Jackson calls for revenue sharing do you think he means Cleveland should distribute 17% of the City’s income tax collection to the suburbs? The City of Solon has about has about 1.5% of the County’s population but collects about 4.5% of the total income tax. Is the City of Solon going to agree to distribute 2/3 of its tax revenue to other suburbs?

2.Efficiency of the large bureaucracy. There is no evidence that a larger bureaucracy is more efficient than a small bureaucracy. Cuyahoga County already has a regional government run by the county commissioners. The County has 33% more employees than it needs, is beset with numerous corruption probes and has a court system that is one of the least efficient in the entire country. Our current regional government is a mess. What would a new one look like?

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/01 ... t_cha.html

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/12 ... .html#more

3. Regional planning. The argument is that a centralized bureaucracy should decide what can be built, where it can be built, who would build it and who makes the profit. This is an idea so stupid that only a government bureaucrat can like it.

Regionalism is more a fetish than economic development plan. By talking about regionalism the political leadership can avoid making decisions about how we are governed. Discussions about regionalism allow politicians to pretend to deal with our economic problems instead of actually governing.

Here are the real problems faced by Cuyahoga County:

1.To many government employees accomplishing to little

2.Collective bargaining agreements that have given government employees pay and benefit packages far in excess of what is fair and reasonable. (Four years ago there were over 100 City of Lakewood employees with compensation packages over $90,000 per year. How much sense does that make?)

Dealing with those two issues would save this community $500 million dollars per year and would go a long way towards reversing Cuyahoga County’s economic decline. And that is without talking about the schools.

[ryan costa]

The goal is to extend to expensiveness of running Cleveland across the county. If every city was as expensive to run as Cleveland, there would be a lot more expense. That adds up to a lot more kickbacks. Or a much more powerful political springboard for whoever assails new heights of regional bureaucracies.

The Bussing method of school integration in Cleveland destroyed Cleveland Public Schools. Integrating Cleveland Schools into the region would have a similar effect on the Region.

[Stephen Eisel]

Can Lakewood Survive The Age of Buddhism? yes