Thursday, December 30, 2010

City Council Found a Way to Punt, AGAIN!

Call it election year gaming,call it gutless, but after basically no one on Council could agree on an honest budget, we got a budget that repeats last year's short term thinking. We punt.

Terrible idea.

In other words we got a big pile of steamy poop.

Politics rules again. Fear of the FOP and Fire Fighter's unions ruled, again. We had multiple council members willing to fire all of the garbage collectors, but not touch the CPD or CFD staff levels at all. That is not honest, that is appeasement to special interest. Refusing to raise fees for trash collection because you want to push through an ideological concept, isn't responsible governance, it a political ploy.

A handful of social service cuts (Pools, school nurses) and a cut to Police overtime, which a couple of years ago wasn't even used, and then the city raids other funds for a ONE TIME FIX.

What that means is unless money falls from the sky, we will be right back where we are this time next year.

We are unfortunately going to get 10 months full of bullshit and hollow political stunts where Ghiz and Winburn will promise the moon and the stars, then in the case of Ghiz put forth no plan and in the case of Winburn be the person who made the steamy pile of poop we got this year, happen again.

Monzel ends his tenure as a City Council member without contributing anything to the City.

As for the rest of council, I am disappointed. The only one making a strong case was Laure Quinlivan. She stood up to the FOP and Fire Fighter's union, pushing both union's leaders to get ejected from Council Committee meeting for disruption. Her ideas were good, but I think her lack of political experience showed in her in ability to muster public support for her plan to cut the excess police staff, something we should do.

There are now clear issues for candidates to run on for election next year. The problem is that few candidates will have the guts to discuss those issues honestly and specifically.

If anyone is paying attention, they might spend some time learning about the candidates and voting for people who would not be afraid to actually make real choices and not use hard economic times to push through selective ideological ideas.

3 comments:

  1. Well, here's the thing. Our problem is a revenue drop, not a spending increase. I mean, did you notice the national depression? So, the budget won't be fixed until the revenue decrease is fixed.

    (I'm not sure it's possible to find these figures online, which is problematic. A decent newspaper would report those numbers.)

    Tax revenues are under their expectations, based on much higher unemployment than usual. So, creating a structural budget based on the current fiscal year is stupid, because we'll wind up with a giant surplus when revenues return to the historical norm.

    That surplus will be spent on whatever Winburn wants, because he's our Olympia Snowe. I'm betting that "what Winburn wants" is worse than "what we have now", so I'm happy with stop-gaps.

    Thus, one-time revenues are the optimal stop-gap to maintain a good long-term budget.

    Firing people is a shitty way to lower unemployment, after all. And if you think we have a bigger problem than the unemployment rate, you're nuts--especially since Kasich plans to fire a bunch of teachers.

    OTOH, I can't find reportage on the actual $29 million in cuts. Is there a journalist in the building?

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  2. Having just read the Enquirer's editorial, this is the Pain Caucus run amok. They want to jack off over the agony of fired public sector employees, and Council just cock-blocked them.

    They say "Those benighted private-sector workers... are seldom insulated from economic downturns..." THAT'S THE MOTHERFUCKING POINT. If we had private trash collection, we'd have higher unemployment right now.

    The point of public policy in a cyclical recession is MAKE THINGS BETTER. They're crying in their Froot Loops because Council rejected a policy that would cost more money overall and raise unemployment BUT would take a line-item off the public balance sheet.

    Enky manufactures the budgetary crisis every two years because they derive sexual pleasure out of the idea of a collective self-flagellation. Guess what? We don't need to sacrifice those jobs this year. Things will be better because of it. Hooray!

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  3. The city of Cincinnati is not an employment agency. It is not a social agency. They had enough warning that the economy had gone south. The money is not there, so they need to stop the spending. Whether you like it or not, the fact is the city population has shrunk; property values have dropped; inflation raises prices; it is a problem that is common throughout the country.

    I don't know who Enky is or who Luke is but if they can get off on this sexually, they are lucky weirdos.

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