BuckeyeBlog

The Columbus Dispatch reported today that the “city of Columbus has dropped its lawsuit against former lead paint manufacturers after the Rhode Island Supreme Court last week shot down the legal argument the city was pursuing.” Marc Kilmer reported on the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s decision last week, pointing out the fallacy of trying to hold paint manufacturers liable for creating a “public nuisance” by selling paint that contained lead several decades ago. In fact, I suggested in a Buckeye Institute Viewpoint a year and a half ago that the city of Columbus should drop the lawsuit. I am glad the city attorneys have come to their senses. Now, the state should follow Columbus’ lead on lead paint and dismiss its similarly bogus lawsuit.

We read with disappointment the progress of teacher (and nurse, and janitor, and lunchroom employee) union contract negotiations in Hilliard, Ohio which concluded earlier this month. 

The Hilliard union employed the usual tactics of industrial era labor conflict including ’work-to-rule’ and filing harrassing unfair-labor-practices charges, all of which only reinforce how obsolete and obstructionist teacher unions are in the 21st Century. (more…)

Suppose you believe in a basic conservative tenet that governments are limited and that responsibility should devolve to the smallest unit of government practicable.

What do you do with those who are not competent to regulate their own behavior?

For the Left, this isn’t really a problem, because they aren’t hampered by a belief that government should be smaller. Indeed, for them, it’s a question of the best tool available, which always happens to be a bigger government that can demand more resources and have the best people in charge of it.

When it comes to personal behavior, the Left wants government to have no role whatever in regulating it if that role smacks of judgment - marriage, sex, obscenity, all are to be let alone. (This non-judgmentalism reverses with evangelical fervor if the conduct is something the Left judges inappropriate - Left-condemned speech, organized sexual restraint, campaign finance, health care finance, campaign finance, weaponry, cigarettes, property use and ownership.)

Of course, unrestricted individual behavior is also a prime goal of the Right, at least the libertarian side of it.

So what do you do when cities start passing laws that criminalize or otherwise punish parents for failing to supervise their children? Maple Heights passed such a law, and a judge threw it out as unconstitutional . Bedford has a similar law, and Cleveland is looking at it.

It’s not an easy question. Society is already well down the road to regulating without limit individual behavior. No smoking laws anyone? How about low-fat diet laws? How about mandatory health care finance? On the one hand, it makes a great deal of sense to consider parents neglectful and responsible for raising little monsters. But what a nightmare, putting government in charge of fixing it.

Hamilton County Commissioner Pat DeWine hopes to establish his county as the first in the United States to put all government expenditures online for public review - including everything from electronic funds transfers to purchase orders to ordinary checks.

Also included would be grants, leaseholds, contracts and subcontracts and vouchers.

“Every item of government spending is available to citizens on the Web in a way that they can easily search how the government is spending their money and who is getting their money,” DeWine said Thursday.

Named the Government Accountability in Spending Program, GASP, the project would require that each disbursement be identified by amount, the spending agency, the budget fund source, the payee name and location, the type of transaction, and the purpose of the expenditure.

DeWine said he hopes to introduce his resolution establishing GASP Wednesday, May 21.

Sandra Fabry, government liaison for Americans for Tax Reform, said GASP was one of the first efforts to apply substantial transparency standards to local government, following significant state and federal transparency initiatives in the last few years.

“It’s not a right-left issue, it’s a right-wrong issue,” Fabry said. “Government spending should not happen in the dark.”

Among models for the effort, DeWine cited the state of Alaska’s online checkbook, hosted by the state division of finance, available at http://fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/checkbook_online/index.jsp

We’ve written before about Skybus, a low-cost, low-fare start-up airline based in Columbus. Skybus ceased operations last Friday evening.

A number of investors voluntarily risked much on the Skybus and lost their bet.

A lot of local and state taxpayers and Port Columbus service users similarly risked much, but the difference lies in our motivation. We were compelled to bet on the Skybus business plan and general economic conditions through taxes and fees that we had no choice but to pay.

Remember, our bets were placed by politicians spending someone else’s money. This would be politicians seeking not the best possible balance between risk and reward (and how can they possibly know the aggregate of all our individual preferences in this regard), but politicians seeking what rewards them, namely photo-ops and contributions and other perks of power.

The News-Herald of Willoughby provides some examples of local government initiative in truly improving efficiency and productivity.

However, this follow up suggestion will run into the reality of public employee collective bargaining:

[School districts] should be open to ideas such as sharing teachers or other personnel whose strengths can help neighboring districts.

We encourage school officials to find ways to trim expenses and remember that doing so helps taxpayers.

The News-Herald should turn the bright light of its investigative reporting on the teacher union contracts as they are negotiated in its communities. The paper will find how school officials - complicit though they may be in negotiating the contracts the way they do - have their hands tied when it comes to really significant cost savings and productivity improvement.