Frugal vs. cheap

Legislators and voters can fall prey to the no-tax hobby farmers who believe township ghosts fix the roads, that the sheriff works for free and schools are fine with library paste and construction paper.

It may surprise them that hospitals and clinics have budgets, that highways don’t build themselves and the grass in parks doesn’t cut itself. The lights come on, the faucet flows and the trash is picked up because government sees to it.

Any township or city worth inhabiting involves expenses (taxes). Even the dead (cemeteries) need attention. The roads to farms need upkeep and so do our streets, bridges and highways. The quality of life in a place depends upon the wisdom of its governors and the understanding of its taxpayers.

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People accept taxes when they know the investment is wise and proper. Taxes are not evil, they are not something to dread. Taxes are the lifeblood of a community. Citizens in places that are better off are citizens who understand the difference between being frugal and being cheap.

The better towns and cities avoid anemia even if it seems painful, because the wise citizen and the smart government know that a community operating on the cheap is likely a community heading for the cellar.

In far-away Topeka, a no-tax life is catnip for fever-dreamers, an easy sell for Know Nothings. Kansans once fell victim to the no-tax hotheads during the dark Brownback years. The rich got richer as revenues crashed and the state began to borrow and spend, bringing the government nearly to bankruptcy. Services from law enforcement and transportation to public health and education withered to the point of wretched.

Elections in 2016 and ’18 brought to Topeka some enlightened legislators and a sharp new governor who put Kansas on a way to recovery. Today we have billions in surplus and savings, a cause for reinvestment, not profit-reaping. We also have a faction in the no-tax crowd who favor a sinister ploy called the flat tax. Fair to all, they claim ‒ all but the middle- and low-incomes.

This is a vision conjured in the dark corners of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Alexandria, Va., a right-wing cause lobby that writes laws for legislators who won’t think for themselves. ALEC’s president is Ty Masterson, who is also president of the Kansas Senate. This is why a flat tax has been proposed and defeated in Topeka five times in three years, and is proposed a second time this year.

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Each day or week wasted on the incantations of out-state special interests is a day or week that we fall behind in deliberating better ways to advance cities and counties because without strong communities we cannot have a strong state.

If legislators care at all about their constituents, they must find their own way through the jungle growth of local worries shared statewide. Health care (Medicaid expansion), public school finance, Highway Patrol recruitment and property taxes are a few for starters.

Outstate influence peddlers are up to their own good, not ours. Legislators who only recently took in their oily bleats learned the hard way that a place will go broke trying to go cheap. Is memory so short in Topeka that apathy is now the coin of that realm?