By Tim Redmond
Okay, this is the sort of thing that really, really annoys me. Ken Garcia is against a June election, which is fine if he thinks no tax measures will pass and thus it’s a waste of money.
But then he says this:
The City doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. It spends wildly on public health programs and hospitals that most cities long ago curbed, and its health care costs and pension benefits spike around 25 percent each year.
So what the board must do, which it hasn’t to any formidable degree, is start cutting into the bloated bureaucracy our fearless leaders have created during the past 20 years, while the mayor tries to renegotiate labor contracts that always seem to sail through during election years.
And then cut. And then cut some more.
When people bloviate about bureacracy and cuts like this, I think they have a responsibility to tell us all, specifically, what they want to cut. It’s easy to talk about spending “wildly and public health programs,” but it’s another thing to say which programs, serving which people, ought to be eliminated.
I asked Garcia what his proposals were and he said he had no comment but would make some suggestions soon.
Frankly, this is horseshit. Half a billion dollars is a lot of money, and while I agree there’s waste at City Hall, there’s not anywhere near half a billion dollars worth of waste. If you don’t want to raise taxes, fine — tell us what you’ll cut instead. Or shut up.