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local leaders

Georgia’s Model City

Local governments suffer from a big problem: bigness. Too often they expand their scope of services, and, in so doing, progressively fail to cover even the old, core set of services. You know, like fire and police and roads and such.

The solution is obvious. Mimic Sandy Springs.

This suburban community north of Atlanta, Georgia, had been ill-​served by Fulton County. So a few years ago the area incorporated. And, to fend off all the problems associated with the “do-​it-​all-​ourselves” mentality, the city didn’t hire on a huge staff of civil servants. Instead, it contracted out the bulk of those services in chunks.

Now, the roads get paved and the streets are cleaned and the waste is removed better as well as cheaper than ever. The town’s mayor, economist Eva Galambos, noted that in five years the town saw 84 miles of roadway newly paved, up from the five miles they were lucky enough to squeeze from Fulton County’s operation during the decade before incorporation.

Reason Foundation, a think tank known for its privatization emphasis, has been on the story from the beginning. A 2005 appraisal predicted that the town would become a “model city.” That prophecy seems to have been on the money, and a Reason TV video emphasizes this with the shocking fact that the town “has no long-​term liabilities.”

As the rest of the nation’s cities, counties and states lurch into insolvency, Sandy Springs shows a way out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture local leaders too much government

Profiles in Non-Courage

What has to happen before government officials reduce the loot they’re lobbing to special interests at the expense of the wallets and future of everybody else?

Armageddon?

The city council of Kansas City, Missouri, won’t permit even an inquiry into how the burg might save bucks.

At Show-​Me Daily, David Stokes notes that a council committee has tabled (killed) a proposal “that called for SIMPLY STUDYING the idea of contracting out the management of certain city assets,” an idea proposed by Mayor Mark Funkhouser. But city unions predictably went to DEFCON 1. The resolution would have authorized the city manager to request information from firms interested in handling things like parking garages and sewer plants.

The mayor says he thought that they might have creative ideas about how to handle things more efficiently. C‑r-​a-​a-​a-​zy, eh? Well, this mild, er, radical notion is off the table, at least for now.

Stokes hopes the council reconsiders while they are in a position of relative strength. If they wait until really pushed to act by “economic realities . . they won’t be [able] to get the best agreement for taxpayers.”

But aren’t the economic realities already here, for Kansas City and every other town in post-​2007 America? 

Single-​issue voters are always going to shout louder than the general public about reforms that affect their short-​term interests. Political “leaders” should do the right thing, not follow the path of least political resistance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.