EDITORIAL: Painless cuts?

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN
First, we worried about cuts in school funding. Now, the state’s budget crisis is threatening city and county services with Gov. Bill Graves’ recent announcement that he intends to initiate significant cuts in these areas.

It’s tempting to rant and rave about such proposals, but you have to wonder what the alternatives could be. Even though he’s a lame duck now, the governor is no dummy. If there were easier (read “less politically explosive”) ways to fix our state’s financial mess, you can bet he would have suggested them by now. Raise taxes, you say? Good luck selling that in these economic times.

So maybe it’s time to ask ourselves: Which local services/functions are we prepared to live without, or at least in reduced form? It’s easy to say there’s tremendous waste in government, and no doubt there is some locally, too. But the definition of “waste” for the average person is any program, project or position that doesn’t inconvenience me or my kin.

At the local level, that’s frightfully few. Prepare to be inconvenienced. -DR

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