In Part 2 of this series we pointed out that the socialists in MoCo have brought us to a situation in which a $1.3 million severance pay is given to a disgraced school superintendent while the poor are threatened with cuts in bus service. In this installment we prescribe a few remarkably easy ways to get more services to the poor without increasing the tax burden on the wealthy.
The underlying constraint in any such reform is to avoid a situation in which the county cuts back on services while collecting the same property taxes. In that outcome, the wealthy will continue to pay their $10,000/year property taxes and in addition start paying for private schools, public safety, and street repairs. That outcome will only aggravate the brain drain and flight of capital out of the county, something that has characterized Marc Elrich’s administration and the associated budgets passed by the County Council. We also want to avoid a situation in which cutbacks in the county’s budget leave the truly needy shivering in the cold. What is the way forward?
The first step is demanding reductions in the school’s administrative budget. Fully 20% of the MCPS $3.3 billion operating budget is for non-instructional activities, an outrageous number in and of itself, but an immoral number when we are facing cuts in bus service. What’s more outrageous is that all of those administrators are entitled to pension benefits.
The next step is to defang the teachers’ union. We (and others) have written several times that this union does not protect the teachers, does not protect the students, and condones severance payments and nepotism when those resources could be given to the teachers and students themselves. As the teachers’ union “represents” all the teachers in the public school system, the way to reduce its influence is to reduce the number of unionized teachers in employed by MCPS. Hiring non-union teachers is one way to reduce the union’s influence; a better way is to implement school vouchers, allowing teachers the option of working in unionized or non-unionized positions. (This arrangement is already available among entertainers, some of whom are hired by production companies that do not engage with Actors’ Equity Association.)
Implementing school vouchers has the added benefit of exposing failing schools. We have yet to know how much of the atrocious $3.3 billion/year school budget goes toward failing schools, failing teachers, and failing support staff. With school vouchers, parents are free to escape their “assigned” schools, and the budget will shrink accordingly. As the budget for failure shrinks, more resources are available for where they are truly needed.
A distant second place in the county’s budget is public safety, most of which goes toward police and fire/rescue. It’s difficult to find a more demoralized workforce in Montgomery County than the police officers. We certainly sympathize with those officers who have left or retired, and express sincere appreciation to those who remain. The biggest problem these officers face is a hostile employer: the county government in general and Council Member Will Jawando in particular. Deputizing private officers allows them to work for other employers, not just the police department.
Overall, the county needs to stop engaging in Martin Luther King’s “socialism is for the rich,” and that means no longer providing resources to those residents who can otherwise afford them. In parallel, it means providing resources only to the truly needy, adopting a reduced county budget to address only that need, and grant tax relief accordingly. Liberals such as Adam Smith have been advocating this approach since 1776.
Implementing these reforms are remarkably easy but politically difficult. They require courage to stand up to a threatening teachers’ union and a wealthy progressive elite that benefits the most from the current arrangement. A population decline, reduced tax base, scandals, and shivering poor waiting for a bus will not deter these people. In the end it will be the common, lower- and middle-class voters who turn the tide for all of us. I look forward to that day.
