Local governing officials,

city and county, are just now waking up to their own official stock market

crashes. The dot-com bubble that decimated millions of private portfolios

has now worked its way down to affecting taxes.

Governments from federal down

to small Fayette cities suddenly are no longer awash in taxation income.

It's a rude awakening, and officials are scrambling to adjust to the tension

caused by the gap between high voter expectations and lowered revenues.

Many are doing stupid things

to try to keep nonessential services up to pre-crash levels.

Cases in point: the hapless

Fayette County Board of Education, the schizophrenic Peachtree City Council,

the Cheshire-cat-smiling Fayetteville City Council and the secretive Fayette

County Commission (maybe).

First, a lesson in plain facts:

the taxman's days of wine and roses are ended. For the first time in many

a moon, local governments are facing actual deficits, and they have no

experience with that phenomenon that faces most Fayette taxpayers every

two weeks or so.

What do Fayette families do

when faced with outgo exceeding income? Most wisely rein in their expectations

and make do within their means. Having less, they spend less.

What do some Fayette governing

entities do? They flail about and engage in unsafe fiscal affairs. They

cannot accept that services must match up with available income.

And some lose sight of their

primary functions.

The school board and central

office wheels botched the school bus decision by forgetting who their

customers are. They failed to give adequate notice of major changes in

bus routes, and they compounded it by sliding in the decision under cover

of dry budget hearings. They claimed to have sent out notification letters

to all affected parents, but precious few parents ever got such an alleged

letter.

This after the board unwisely

voted to sign contracts to construct a high school fine arts building

even though there's no money in the budget for their decision.

The board has its spending

priorities out of whack. Six-year-olds forced to walk from their neighborhoods

in the dark to stand beside busy major roads to await a school bus? And

central office wheels not coming up with bus route schedules until the

Friday before the first Monday bus run? This from the local government

that takes most of our property taxes.

Parents are understandably

angry.

Now the Peachtree City Council:

I'm just about ready to give up on this bunch. They want to double city

court fines to bail themselves out of a declining revenue situation? Are

they crazy? The police department as an unabashed out-front revenue generator?

There would be no better way to drain public support for an otherwise

good police department than this foolish idea.

Grow up, Peachtree City. You've

fed at the developers' teat too long. The development fee trough is nearly

empty. Sales tax revenues are down because sales are down. Reality must

arrive. You can't afford some of the things you've gotten used to enjoying.

I repeat: You cannot afford

some of things you've gotten accustomed to being provided at low or no

charge.

From tennis centers to ballfields,

you're going to have to tighten your belt. Focus on government's reason

for existence: Public safety, basic services (reliable roads, working

traffic controls, etc.), access to reliable utilities and a reasonable

business climate. Essentials versus nonessentials.

If you want nonessentials,

be prepared to pay extra for those specific added services that you use.

Whatever nonessential services cost must be borne by those who use those

nonessential services. And don't give this Peachtree Citian that lame

argument about maintaining the "Peachtree City lifestyle." That's

like putting expensive drapes on windows to hide the empty rooms within.

This also is called fiscal

responsibility. And in a majority Republican county, why on earth should

that have to be spelled out?

The annex-to-the-horizon Fayetteville

Council: Ah, what can I say about these guys? Everytime they smile, another

40 acres of county land gets gobbled up for increased density and commercial

developments. They've become the latest local government to snub the taxpaying

voters and decide to go into deep debt for a new public building. Peachtree

City did it several years ago, Fayette County did it and now Fayetteville

is jumping on the unaccountable bandwagon.

Once upon a golden time, local

governments had to come hat in hand before local voters and ask voters'

permission to go into debt and obligate those taxpayers to long-term repayments.

Sometimes voters said no, and this angered the politicians and bureaucrats

who wanted their new buildings. So conniving with the state legislature,

they came up with a voter-avoidance debt scheme: "Bricks and Mortar"

or some such fancy name.

Without any voter getting a

say, the pols can float millions upon millions of dollars in public debt

to build whatever and whenever they like. And that's what Fayetteville

just did with its $5.25 million new cop and court headquarters.

That's debt that Fayetteville

taxpayers are obligated to repay, and they never got a say in that decision.

That ain't right, no matter how legal it may be. And then we wonder why

local governments keep needing more and more tax money even though services

don't keep getting better and better.

Two members of the council

are running for reelection this year. Ask them if they have any more similar

surprises in store for us left-out-but-left-with-the-bill taxpayers.

And Fayette County may have

its own stealth "revenue enhancement" scheme afoot. There are

some who think that the county commission may be trying to sneak in their

own back-door police force to make arrests across Fayette and raise revenue

for county coffers.

Recall that we already pay

millions for a very competent sheriff's department to patrol the roads,

deter crime and catch lawbreakers.

The marshal's office has been

rebadged under an unpublicized realignment and now comes under a new county

"department of public safety." State law requires a voter referendum

before a county commission can create its own police force apart from

the sheriff's department. So what is the Fayette Commission trying to

do with this ever-so low-key "realignment"?

Already, we hear, zealous marshals,

eager to raise revenue, have been ticketing citizens' vehicles parked

at county recreation fields. The charge? Tires touching the white parking

lines. Each white-line "touch" costs more than $60. And this

in a Republican county! And you see county marshal's trucks making traffic

stops along many of Fayette's byways these days.

And we hear that questions

are being raised about whether the marshals have the necessary statutory

authority to make traffic arrests, possibly imperiling some state court

cases.

What are Chairman Greg Dunn

and his fellow "conservatives" on the commission up to? Don't

they know that piling on more layers of government, even those wearing

police uniforms, won't advance anyone's political ambitions in a Republican

county?

From the school board to county

commission to city councils, we've got a lot of folks holding office in

Fayette County, many of whom have a big "R" beside their ballot

names, but you can't tell much difference in their local taxing philosophy

from your average national grab-and-spend Democrat.