By Mitchel Olszak
“Have you been reading the letters in the paper?”
I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation between two people last week.
“People are really fed up with this tax increase,” the speaker continued. “It’s about time.”
The topic, of course was a spate of letters to the editor that have been running in the New Castle News. They have been uniformly critical of the Lawrence County commissioners’ decision to raise county property taxes by 18 percent in the midst of a recession.
Another of these letters appears on today’s page. As you can see, the tone is not a charitable one toward our county’s elected officials.
I can understand why people are unhappy. No one likes to pay higher taxes. And in an economy where lots of people either have lost their jobs or have seen their paychecks shrink courtesy of furloughs, there’s little sympathy for a county government that wants a bigger piece of the pie.
The commissioners repeatedly have cited state budget cuts, along with a months-long delay in approving Pennsylvania’s current budget, as major factors behind their decision to raise taxes. In other words, they want you to know it’s not their fault.
Reading letters in The News, you get the definite sense that message wasn’t received.
Or else it wasn’t believed.
But there’s something about these letters that bothers me. I can’t help but wonder how many of the writers communicated their opposition to higher taxes to the commissioners before this year’s budget was approved.
After all, the commissioners telegraphed their intention to raise taxes well before they introduced the budget in early December. During this time, did they receive the sort of public feedback that would warn them of the consequences of their decision?
It has been my observation that the level of communication between elected officials and average citizens is quite poor. That’s true at every level, including the local one, where you might expect better.
If politicians do something, believing the public doesn’t object, while citizens wait until final decisions are made before expressing dissatisfaction, the results are predictable. Elected officials are blind-sided and the people grow increasingly disillusioned with government.
A healthy political culture cannot exist if exchanges between politicians and public occur solely at election time. There needs to be an ongoing dialogue, a degree of communication that ensures politicians have the opportunity to explain themselves and the people have the opportunity to declare what they expect.
Absent a constructive relationship with taxpayers, county officials are likely to run themselves into a ditch. Under the best of circumstances, county government generally muddles along, burdened as it is by a convoluted and inefficient system designed to deter dynamism and innovation.
But when there is a crisis, or when the unexpected happens, watch out. The commissioners in particular come off looking lost. This explains why they bumbled through efforts to obtain wage concessions from county employees. And it explains why the county is now dealing with grievances filed as the result of furloughs.
The best the commissioners can hope for in the coming year is to demonstrate that tax dollars are being spent responsibly and the 18 percent hike will be put to good use. Losing grievances and continued uncertainty will put the commissioners further on the defensive.
They have their work cut out for them.
