More Cameras, More Stops, More Subsidies
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 By Marc KilmerLast week the Ohio House approved Governor Strickland’s transportation budget. There are a lot of problems with this budget. For one, it spends too much. I find it hard to believe we need to be spending $7.6 billion on transportation “needs” when the state is facing such dire fiscal problems. This is exemplified by the governor’s push for reintroduction of passenger rail in the state, which is a dream for social planners but which will drain taxpayer money for years to come. Aside from fiscal issues, there are also policy implications from this bill. Its provisions to allow speed cameras and give police power to stop motorists because they aren’t wearing their seat belts will mean a loss of liberty for Ohioans.
Let’s take the passenger rail plan first. The governor wants to reintroduce the service from Cleveland to Cincinnati by way of Columbus and Dayton. Urban planners and government bureaucrats love passenger rail. They see a bright future where all citizens will behave just as planners desire and ride trains instead of driving. Of course, people being individuals, they behave differnetly than planners want. There is no possibility that the cost of passenger rail will be supported by those who ride it. Massive federal and state subsidies (read, money coming from the taxpayer) will be necessary. Governor Strickland’s transportation chief does not dispute this.
The governor has said, “The fact is, I am unwilling to let Ohio be an island surrounded by other states who are pursuing passenger rail service and leave Ohio out of that essential transportation network.” Why not? Let these states waste their scarce revenue on these boondoggles. Just because they are making bad choices with their transportation budgets does not mean Ohio needs to do so. Given the fact that there will not be enough riders to pay for passenger rail, it means that it is not an “essentiall transportation network.” If it were “essential,” it would be profitable because people would be willing to pay for it.
The governor’s push for this is bad enough. But the transportation bill is written in such a way that it will proceed not with the approval of the General Assembly, but with approval of the Controlling Board. Democrats split control of the General Assembly with Republicans; they have a majority on the Controlling Board. The General Assembly is elected by the people; the Controlling Board is not. If those supporting passenger rail are so convinced that it’s “essential,” why are they tring to rig the process to get it started?
Approval of passenger rail for Ohio would mean a huge burden on Ohio’s taxpayers for years to come. Approval of speed cameras and authority for police to stop people for not wearing seatbelts would mean a loss of liberty for Ohioans for years to come. While speed cameras are not necessarily the beginning of a world where government records us at all times, it is still troubling to have enforcement of the law by a machine not only from a civil libertarian perspective but also from an effective law enforcement perspective.
Giving police more authority to pull over motorists (especially for a victimless crime like not wearing one’s seatbelt) is just inviting more govenrment scrutiny of our lives. Interestingly, it seems this change is not really being made because of public safety concerns. It is being done in order to increase state revenue. The governor has decided that money is more important than liberty and a majority of the Ohio House has gone along with him.
A sidelight to these issues is the role played by the federal government in this. Those arguing in favor of passenger rail and allowing police to make traffic stops for seatbelt violations do so, in part, because the federal government will give the state more money if it does these things. Without these federal incentives, it’s almost certain that there would be far less support for both initiatives. This “free” money from the feds makes these bad policies more attractive. It’s another example of how the erosion of federalism through has a variety of bad outcomes for our nation’s citizens.
Tags: cameras, passenger rail, transportation
March 10th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Here’s a story that illustrates your point about trains.
Last summer, my son had to travel to NYC. For reasons not relevant here, his choices were to take the train from Cincinnati or the bus from Columbus. Since he was starting in Columbus and his friend was starting in Cincy, either city seemed equal as a starting point.
Like most people, he liked the IDEA of the train. At least he would have more room, could walk around, and well, it would be a train and not a bus.
But then-reality. The Amtrak subsidized train cost about twice as much as the bus. And much to our surprise, the bus took twelve hours while the train took seventeen!
Hey! Almost all of us like the idea of a train. Think: Arlo Guthrie, etc… (OK, this may not the best analogy on this web site
). But I imagine that Ohio could get a great train that lots of people would take–once or twice–for the fun of it, but that the cost and timing, even with subsidies, would not make it a routine first choice.
So my son took the bus. It was not the most enjoyable experience, and he hopes to be in a position to try something else next time. But by something else, he means fly or drive. Not a good omen for the trains.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
People should not speed. They should wear seat belts. Let’s say we all agree on that.
The problem is the balance between enforcers and enforcees.
An example is the now defunct Special Prosecutor Law. By the time the Special Prosecutor was done with Clinton, not even his enemies wanted to renew the law. Most in Congress felt that the balance between enforcer and enforcee was unbalanced since there was a prosecutor with only one person to prosecute. Society usually maintains this balance by having a prosecutor limited by at least some limits on his or her resources and by having many crimes to pursue.
If you can now be stopped for not wearing a seat belt, or if a camera is starting to watch your every move, whither balance?