Our local government agencies have never learned to act like a business with taxpayers’ money.
This historically dismal economy – in which companies are closing, unemployment has skyrocketed and families are suffering – has underscored the reality that elected leaders in San Benito County generally fall short of the business-like approach many of them have touted through the years while wooing voters.
One recent example is occurring in San Benito County government.
County Administrative Office Susan Thompson briefed supervisors two weeks ago about startling declines in revenue and a plummeting general fund surplus, which dropped by more than 50 percent in a year.
She noted how the county plans to address the negative trends by examining such cost-cutting options as furlough time for workers and foregoing coffee and bottled-water service.
As there is no sign of an economic recovery anytime soon, and the recession likely will deepen, these solutions are simply a Band-Aid to long-term fiscal declines that deserve more of a structural fix than the “surgical approach” – in other words, reactionary – noted by Thompson.
Taxing agencies like San Benito County may represent the citizens in their broad range of decision making, but they certainly are not a reflection of their constituents’ pains when it comes to economic struggles.
While the county is wading into the possibility of implementing furloughs for employees and cutting out a few little luxuries for workers, we’re not aware of too many companies in the private sector that are not implementing across-the-board pay cuts and wide-ranging layoffs.
Instead, county leaders will consider the “surgical approach” to cost cutting as residents in the private sector, in general, are faced with much bigger challenges, as the citizens who pay the bills have fewer and fewer dollars to just get by.
