Troy Reinhart, the president of the Bend Chamber of Commerce, has written a two-page document titled “Saving Bend Through Government Innovation.” As you might expect from a conservative Chamber of Commerce president, Reinhart thinks “government innovation” mostly means shrinking government and turning its functions over to private business.
Some of Reinhart’s ideas are simple common sense – such as looking into whether the City of Bend, Deschutes County, the Bend Metro Parks & Recreation District and the Bend-LaPine School District can consolidate some services to “stop duplications and pool valuable resources.”
Others, though, are worrisome. For instance, Reinhart believes the city needs to “remove roadblocks to growth” by developing “a timetable [and] a deadline to identify and eliminate regulations and processes that unnecessarily inhibit business and job development.”
What “regulations and processes” does Reinhart have in mind? He doesn’t say – but I bet land use regulations of any kind would be high on the list.
Perhaps it would be rude to point out that five or six years ago Bend was growing like a toadstool in a cow patty despite the supposed “roadblocks” created by big bad gummint – and that the roadblock to growth in Bend today is not government regulation, but the fact that we built too many houses and commercial properties and now hardly anybody wants to buy them.
“How much money could be saved by privatizing services such as the Bend Water System, Sewer System, and Emergency Services (ambulance service)?” Reinhart asks. “Can the Public Works Department be improved through outsourcing?”
These suggestions are rooted in the conservative dogma that anything government can do, private business can do better. Maybe sometimes that’s true – but our recent experience with the collapse of the financial sector and our even more recent experience with British Petroleum’s monumental screw-up in the Gulf of Mexico ought to make us a little skeptical.
Another of Reinhart’s bright ideas is “a City Charter-incorporated cap on the level of public sector employment spending versus private sector employment earnings.” In other words, when private payrolls shrink the city would have to lay off workers and/or cut pay too.
At first glance that looks sensible, but the trouble is that the need for public services doesn’t go away in hard economic times. Kids still have to go to school, the cops still have to catch bad guys, the firefighters still have to put out fires. In fact, the need for some government services increases when times get tough.
Reinhart’s concluding proposals are that “all excess [city] property should be sold to the private sector” and “Juniper Ridge should be sold to a developer as industrial property to reduce city costs and future expenditures, while ensuring the project remains consistent with the Juniper Ridge Master Plan.”
The city inevitably will bail out of Juniper Ridge, as I and others predicted when the city dumped Ray Kuratek and Jeff Holzman as master developers back in 2008. The city will unload the property at a fire-sale price – after paying for the planning and much of the infrastructure – and the private purchaser will skim off the gravy.
Socialize the costs and privatize the profits – it’s the Bend way.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2010.
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Sounds to me like Dr. Reinhart is the perfect man for the job of getting Bend back to being a prosperous city with living wage jobs for those willing to work. Problem is he is outnumbered by city officials and progressives that don’t want to be pulled from the government teat.
I say it is easy to criticize. What are YOUR suggestions. I think his suggestions are provoctative and stimulating…not the same old same old. I think you are for even BIGGER government.
HBM, you’re so predictable. As long as you keep bringing it up, I’ll be here to correct you. The financial market/real estate bubble was rooted in the ADDED interference of “gummint” specifically Bubba Clinton’s gummint. His cronies (Harold Rains, Jamie Gorelick, and many,many others) ended up over at Fannie and Freddie Mac that PRODUCED those regualtions or furthered their enforcement that forced Fannie and Freddie to become market makers and hatched the sub-prime market which fostered the financial meltdown. Without that “gummint” intervention, the free market would not have supported those mortgage products (liar loans) that proved so toxic. Secondly, your friend W tried to get control of Fannie and Freddie but was rebuffed by that senate paragon of truth and honesty, Chris Dodd, and effervescent Bawney Fwank of the house.
As for the oil spill, too bad these companies can’t drill on land or shallower water where there is plenty of resource and less chance of such a catastrophe. Oh but then again it was government and environmental regs that forced these companies into deeper and deeper water.
And it is just so predictable of you that whenever anyone speaks of reducing the cost of “gummint” your first response (like most libs) is to cut public safety and education. No wonder we can’t entrust national security to your party. And while our enemies may like us more now, they don’t respect us. They know the only ones we’ll push around are our allies such as Israel and the countries of Eastern Europe that we left hanging when we pulled our missile defense to placate and appease our enemies.
“HBM, you’re so predictable. As long as you keep bringing it up, I’ll be here to correct you. The financial market/real estate bubble was rooted in the ADDED interference of “gummint” specifically Bubba Clinton’s gummint.”
LMAO! The standard right-wing spin: “CLINTON DID IT!” (Oh, by the way, 9/11 was his fault too — nothing is EVER a Republican’s fault.) And you say I’M predictable?
“As for the oil spill, too bad these companies can’t drill on land or shallower water where there is plenty of resource and less chance of such a catastrophe. Oh but then again it was government and environmental regs that forced these companies into deeper and deeper water.”
ROTFLMAO!!! Again, the stock right-wing talking point, straight from the mouths of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. “This disaster wouldn’t have happened if those eeeeeee-vil environmentalists hadn’t FORCED the poor oil companies to drill in such deep water! Oh, boo-hoo!”
You’re a joke, “critic.”
Now that you mention it, 9/11 was his fault. Thanks for reminding me.
I know that once the other debater’s remarks become personal, they have lost the argument. Nice try HBM.
—the jokester
“Now that you mention it, 9/11 was his fault.”
Yes, and Bill Clinton also is responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders, Hurricane Katrina, the Icelandic volcano eruption and the heartbreak of psoriasis.
I’m glad we have you around for laughs, “critic.”
“What are YOUR suggestions.”
As I said, I like some of Reinhart’s ideas, such as consolidating public services. I also agree the city needs to unload Juniper Ridge — it simply can’t afford to keep it.
As for my own suggestions, I think we should be trying to keep the UGB as small as possible rather than making it as big as possible, because it’s easier to provide services such as sewer, water, and police and fire protection to a compact city rather than a sprawling one.
We definitely should NOT be cutting or eliminating permit fees and SDC charges, which would only encourage builders and developers to add more homes and commercial properties to an already glutted market, while decreasing city revenue. In fact we should INCREASE SDCs so they cover more of the real costs of development.
We should be actively recruiting businesses that pay family-wage jobs and offering them tax reductions — BUT include “claw-backs” so that if they skip town after a couple of years we can get at least some of the lost revenue back.
We should be striving to develop a sustainable, prosperous economy instead of depending on growth as our main “industry,” which keeps us stuck in a boom-bust cycle and also results in the trashing of the landscape because our local officials are afraid to say no to any kind of development, no matter what or where.
Of course none of these ideas has a snowball’s chance in hell because the builder/developer/realtor axis is against them, and what the axis wants, it gets.
@critic – Hey…deep water drilling was sold by the oil industry (and their media and political hacks) as the SAFE alternative to shallow water drilling…how? Up to the current tragedy, the oil spill fear was (in large part) based on the Santa Barbara spill where the blow out location was fairly close to shore, resulting in lots of oil on beaches, boats, marshes, etc. Deep water drilling was supposed to be safer because it was farther off-shore which meant more time to skim/boom/clean up the oil before it reached land -in the rare event there was a spill. Honestly…no one (oil industry, government, politicos) thought there would be a situation where they couldn’t shut the damn thing off! On this one…the environmental folks – who refused to believe the “Trust us…it is safe!” group were the ones that were right.
On Reinhart’s suggestions…nothing new there. There is some value if followed in MODERATION…it will be disasterous otherwise. The same old “out source everything” creed has been tried in many other places. It is probably appropriate for specialized needs, or to handle demands in services that fluctuate – but it is not a good idea for routine, long term needs or services. I have worked extensively as a public employee, as a private contract employee to the public sector (which is what is being advocated) – and am now a small business owner. Out source too much and there is a drastic decline in the service.
cynic: Yes, the Republicans and tea partiers must think folks have awfully short memories. I distinctly remember Palin and McCain and their followers yelling “Drill, baby, drill!” until they were blue in the face. The chant was “Drill, baby, drill!” — not “Drill, baby, drill, but only on land or near the coast, because it’s too risky in deep water!”
Re outsourcing: You may, repeat “may,” save some money with it, but you lose public accountability. And obviously you open the door to kickbacks and other chicanery. (Not that anybody in Bend would ever be involved in such nefarious doings.)
They are lengthy documents, and are changing on a month to month basis as the council and school board try to deal with deficits, but they are still interesting:
city budget: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/finance/budget/docs/FY_2009_2011_Biennial_Budget.pdf
school budget: http://www.bend.k12.or.us/education/sctemp/d2d719ba33dab1f82acc2ada58b15bbf/1276542934/08-09_Adopted_Budget_opt.pdf
When looking it over I can’t help by notice that the biggest percentage of both are salaries: the city’s police/fire fighting salaries and the school district’s teachers salaries. It makes sense: cut a large percentage from small budget items and there is a small effect; cut small percentage from major budget items and have a major impact.
When I read threads like this, I am reminded of what Henry Ford said: Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Some of Reinhart’s proposals make sense. The city is bleeding in red ink because of bad decision making in the past. But arguing about who did what to whom so some can score political points at the expense of others is total BS and many people are getting tired of it. HB is right–the Chamber’s solutions are intended to benefit a one sector of our city’s business/industry: real estate financing, development, construction and sales. This at a time when the market is saturated with the results of this very segment of our economy. They are asking us, the tax payer, to subsidize their industry by waiving the infrastructure development costs because it will ‘all take care of itself’ when the economy turns around. One has to ask: ‘Can you show us how the infrastructure you didn’t pay for the last time is doing?’
I was reading this weekend and came across Menken’s quote again: ‘For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.’ It would be nice if the cut-and-spend policies of the conservatives were any more effective than the tax-and-spend policies of the progressives, but they aren’t. Now True Conservatives will argue along with True Progressives that PURE conservative policies and PURE Progressive policies have never been tried. Wow, there’s a healthy dose of reality for you: what really happens is different from what you can ever to achieve.
Especially with politicians: just like self policing corporations they always do what is best for them and not for everyone. They have a higher purpose–reelection and unrestricted profits.
These threads are a tiny, real-time photo of the sad shape of affairs here and elsewhere.
You know, I reliably see Bruce to the left of me, but I’ve got to say he’s more connected to the reasons for the housing bubble and crash than those first few critics.
I like markets, what I would call free-ish markets, but I know that bubbles can crashes are natural in them. It is simply misreading history to think otherwise.
Being to the right of Bruce, I’d eliminate home ownership subsidies and tax credits. I wouldn’t even argue that home ownership is a good goal for society. I’d say make fair loans, and let people with _down_payments_ and stable incomes, and a desire to be rooted in one place take them. Other folks are probably better off renting – not least because it’s easier to follow jobs in or out of town.
I think growth and zoning issues are morally complex. Land owners should have rights. At the same time though, the US bought “zoning” as a concept really a long time ago. And so owners and “zoners” negotiate.