Shifting burdens down to the local level:
Tax cuts and tax shifts. Business accounting depends on actually balancing revenues and expenses. Not so for our governor and legislature. Budgeting is a shell game to them. Cuts to state taxes and programs simply shift the costs to property taxes and sales taxes with 80 percent of us paying more.
As a candidate for local municipal office, I've had to familiarize myself with small-town budgeting. In many ways it's more complicated than a 750 page state budget, because you just don't have as many "baskets" of money to shift around. That was the case even before the General Assembly rolled up their sleeves and got serious about smothering local governments, and now the word "complicated" just doesn't cover it anymore. And it's not just a lack of respect for municipal governments; These steps are intended to bring hardship to the citizenry, because they will very likely strike out against local council members as a result, and not their Legislative representatives. Resulting in a wave of (even more) business-friendly local governments, ready, willing, and able to surrender their responsibilities to the private sector. While it is very clever, it is also the antithesis of Democracy. More painful cost-shifts:
http://ift.tt/1WmdxSh
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