Today's Post Standard features and Op Ed from County Executive Joanie Mahoney calling for increased consolidation of essential services throughout the county. In yesterdays post i spoke of the need to reduce the size of the legislative body and this article piggybacks on that same theme. Can we afford not to reduce government? Can we afford to continue spending our hard earned and dwindling tax dollars not on services actually being provided but on duplicated layers of bureaucracy?

There has been much talk of consolidation of police and fire services but little concrete action to date. Why the resistance? Well for one our elected officials are very entrenched and comfortable. And why shouldn't they be with incumbency an almost guarantee path to year after year reelection. Some have called for term limits but i feel this simply masks the larger issues at hand. The problem is that too few people vote and those who cast ballots with regularity fail to even research their candidates, choosing instead to vote across the party line blindly choosing any candidate so long as they are the same party as the voter. Many defer their obligation to know the people they are voting into power and leave it to the discretion's of the party elites to put forth a slate of "like minded candidates". Until we as tax payers begin to challenge our leaders: Democrats and Republicans we will be destined to elect the same stale old guard mentalities that got us into this mess.

At the end of the day we all want the politicians to cut our taxes-but they dare not cut our subsidies. The elderly want more programs for seniors but decry spending on sports of education. Younger families with children rail against more Senior offerings and demand more money be spent on education. People argue against merging police departments out of fear that they will no longer be safe though statistically that has not proven to be the case where consolidation was put into effect.

"Cut my taxes-cut someone Else's benefits" seems to be the battle cry of our once proud and powerful state" We need to get to a common ground of shared responsibility and shared sacrifice where hard choices are openly debated and votes taken. We need to get to a place where our revenues match our expenditures and our priorities are focused on "less being more" and on "the must haves-versus the nice to haves". Only then can we move forward.
http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2010/06/commentary_approach_discussion.html