Yes, today is the day when Americans go to the polls to choose whether to slide this country further down the path towards fascism and oligarchy or whether to reverse course and continue this experiment in representative government by electing candidates to offices from the national, state, and local levels. And, yes, there will be terrible hassles and unnecessary difficulties in doing so due to corruption, ineptitude, and apathy. Citizens will be refused or denied the vote. Machines will break or flip votes. Lines will be long. Lines in some areas (mostly Dem leaning or heavily populated by people of Color) will be extremely long. Citizens will find that they have been removed from the rolls in error. But after the emergency orders from judges have all been issued and the last person in a district casts a ballot or provisional ballot, we will start our handwringing and scorekeeping as we try to determine which way the wind has blown this year. Make no mistake; it is a big year, an important election. Control of our US Congress is rightfully the main show tonight. After that (or while we are waiting for tight races to be called), we will turn attention to state legislatures, governorships, and other local races. Besides a few popular ballot questions that will ask voters things like whether they want it be easier or harder to get weed, guns, or healthcare, most of our attention will be on people.
But there, at the bottom, or on the back of many ballots will be…
BOND ISSUES
These are the questions that ask voters to allow the state or city to borrow money to do something that the voters might like. Many of them involve building something, such as new schools and roads, or fixing older buildings and roads. They won’t get many big headlines tonight. I doubt there are many folks in Virginia wondering if Rhode Island will issue a bond to finance improvements to University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus. I certainly won’t be waiting up to see how Oregon is going to spend its money. But, as much as these might be the D-List celebrities tonight, it does not mean they are unimportant. Nor is their newsworthiness an indicator of what we value as a society.
On the contrary, even though we will be watching to see who wins what race, billions of dollars of debt will approved across the country tonight to finance buildings. According to the Fed, there was 1.6 trillion dollars of municipal debt in the market. By 2011 that figure had more than doubled to 3.74 trillion. Most of that money is money that will go to building projects and will be paid back by the city or state over many years.
I am a fan of building. I like infrastructure. It’s one of government’s main jobs. I would like to see high-speed rail and stable bridges. But there are some things that trouble me about this state and local debt. First, taking on massive debt for maintenance and repair seems scary and wrong. I understand that sometimes repair has been deferred for so long, that the bill really starts to grow beyond the ability for a city or state to pay for out of pocket. Still, we might want to move to a practice of not getting into that position. By the time that debt with a premium, that road or dorm will once again need a major overhaul. Every buck that Wall St. gets is a dollar a taxpayer has to spend that does not go into anything useful in that taxpayer’s life. Secondly, these massive bills are usually incurred by those folks in office that want to showcase a project that they are responsible for, but won’t have to deal with debt burden they leave behind.
That brings me to the thing that bothers me most about how these building projects are financed. People want stuff. A nice new public works project sounds great when times are good (“hey, we can afford it”) or even when that project might look the solution to a stagnant economy. Either way, taxes are not going to skyrocket in any given year because the city took out a loan for a new school. Multi-million dollar projects are an easy sell. The voters get to look at something new and shiny. Economies don’t always chug along nicely though. Cycles, recessions, demographic shifts, and changes in industry might send a city or state’s economy into shaky territory.
It is right about this time that politicians start calling for “shared burdens” from the public employees. Voters complain about bloated payrolls and excessive pensions. The chorus becomes the spiteful jealous demand that public employee benefits be stripped back. Seldom is heard the rallying cry of “default on our bond obligation!”
We can’t unmake that building, to be sure. It’s already bought and paid for, right?
It’s still being paid for years and years later, when your city or state is having a budget crisis. But, still, that loan will be paid off. Employees might get fired. Services to the citizens might be cut. But Wall St. WILL get its juice.
That’s what really burns me. The people (citizens and employees) are subject to the ups and downs of the economy. Buildings are immune. When we vote to finance things this way, we are declaring, as a society, that we value buildings over people. If we cannot manage to finance our roads and building through current income, why do we not give the same protection to the people that work in and use those buildings? Why aren’t we floating a bond every time we hire a teacher or firefighter? Well, sure, that would make the debt problem worse. But it would at least put humans on a level playing field as concrete.
![Albert V Bryan Federal District Courthouse - Alexandria Va - 0016 - 2012-03-10
Looking up and southwest at a closeup of the statue of Blind Justice on front of the Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. This courthouse is home to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The statue and architrave constitute the artwork "Justice Delayed, Justice Denied." This is a 1994 artwork by American sculptor Raymond Kaskey. The statue depicts the traditional "Blind Justice," holding the scales of justice in each hand. The statue leans out over the entrance of the courthouse, her robes billowing in the wind.](https://images.dailykos.com/images/505353/story_image/6830726742_d3805df940_o.jpg?1518111191 "Albert V Bryan Federal District Courthouse - Alexandria Va - 0016 - 2012-03-10
Looking up and southwest at a closeup of the statue of Blind Justice on front of the Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. This courthouse is home to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The statue and architrave constitute the artwork "Justice Delayed, Justice Denied." This is a 1994 artwork by American sculptor Raymond Kaskey. The statue depicts the traditional "Blind Justice," holding the scales of justice in each hand. The statue leans out over the entrance of the courthouse, her robes billowing in the wind.")
