Gonna Dance? You Have To Pay Fiddler

The people have spoken: We hate government. Cut it back. We hate taxes. Cut them, too. We hate city life. We’re headed for the country, where the government won’t bug us. But we have a right to quick fire protection, fabulous public libraries and other government services, whether we pay for them or not.

My, these neo-conservative westerners are naive, aren’t they?

Maybe we needed that conservative revolution more than anybody realized. Maybe the federal government’s deficit spending fooled public opinion into thinking folks really are entitled to something for nothing.

Surpriiiiise: If you want library services or fire protection or any of a host of other government services (yeah, government DOES do worthwhile things), then you gotta pay taxes. If you don’t want the taxes, you do without the services.

In the city of Spokane, voters agreed to raise their property taxes to finance a major expansion of their library system. Included in the expansion was a state-of-the-art computer indexing and data retrieval system.

People who live outside city limits didn’t pay for that new system. They pay taxes for their own, more primitive library system. Should they be allowed to use the city’s new system for free, taking its resources out of the hands of those who bought them? They think so. They are irate because the city library system decided to charge a fee for providing its updated services to nonresidents of the city.

Meanwhile, people also profess shock because a $300,000 house burned to the ground the other day northwest of town. The house, like hundreds of others in Eastern Washington, was located outside the boundaries of fire protection districts. Of course, this means a savings at tax time, because fire districts charge money for their services.

It also means risk. No district, no taxes, no service. Period.

Both controversies involve the same, simple issues: choice, accountability, fairness.

Urban sprawl and its adverse consequences have become the Spokane area’s paramount issue. For a variety of reasons, some people choose life in the “country.” Fine. However, these neo-pioneers must be accountable for the costs as well as the advantages.

It is true that the Spokane community extends well beyond city limits. Beyond those boundaries, services come from a crazy quilt of taxing districts. There are gaps and inconsistences between the districts.

This is one reason the county’s Freeholders are laboring toward a gradual unification and consistency of government services. Yet even the Freeholders must respect the connection between taxes and service. The level of one determines the level of the other.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board