When you are a hammer, as the saying goes, everything is a nail. So it is with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which answers “cut government spending” to every question.
The conservative group released its “piglet book” last week, which it said showed that state government wasted $2 billion over the last five years. Listing how much the state spent on bottled water, judges’ salaries and construction projects that were never actually funded may look impressive, but it tells people very little about how the state manages its resources.
Worse, some of the book’s commentary is just wrong. “Government spending is out of control,” says the executive summary. “ … State government continues to grow in spite of a poor economy.” Grow? The state budget passed earlier this year is $500 million smaller than the previous biennial budget. The number of state employees has decreased by more than 1,000 since 2002. A case could be made that these decreases aren’t big enough, but they aren’t growth.
The summary continues: “Waste, mismanagement, abuse and fraud are all to blame for the overspending problem in Maine government.”
Actually, Maine, like other states, has a fundamental problem: Its residents want lots of government services — well-maintained roads, police to answer their calls, schools to educate their children, treatment for the mentally ill — but they don’t want to pay for it. Maine has another problem: It has a small population spread across a large area, so delivering government services is more expensive. This is likely why the state spent nearly $8 million on mileage reimbursements in 2007 and 2008, an example from the piglet book. Wasteful? Probably not to the people who expect the new bridge in town to be inspected nor to the family who expected the state police to come investigate a murder nor to the child whose life is kept on track by visits from a case worker.
Listing what one group calls wasteful spending or putting artificial caps on state spending and making tax increases virtually impossible — as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which the Maine Heritage Policy Center is again pushing on the Nov. 3 ballot — doesn’t capture these fundamental problems. And it certainly does nothing to address them.
It is far easier to stand on the sidelines and say that everything state lawmakers and bureaucrats do is wrong. It is far more difficult to join the discussion and offer realistic alternatives. Don’t think the tax reform plan put forward by Democrats was the best approach? Offer a different way to cut taxes without gutting state revenue. Don’t think the state should pay so much overtime? Discuss different ways to manage the workload.
Groups that oppose the Democrats’ domination of the State House would also do well to recruit and support their own candidates. Want a more business-friendly Legislature? Support business owners who are willing to serve. Ditto for those who want to reshape government.
Printing a book full of big numbers is a sure way to get attention. But without putting those big numbers into any context, they are meaningless.