Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Well, I think we should just leave Canada out of this. Compared to the U.S., all levels of government in Canada look like they're run by certified accountants when it comes to taxing and spending. It's a mismatched comparison.
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I've often said that the Americans should hire our Auditor General to go over the US Military's books.
What she would find would be staggering I am sure.
For those who don't know, the Auditor General - headed up by Sheila Fraiser is basically the independent body that ensures the government is spending money properly.
I don't believe the Americans have a similar such body.
OAG Welcome to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada
---------- Post added at 05:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:17 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jinn
So when I walked away from this thread it was about Colorado Springs asinine decision to vote down a necessary increase in municipal funding and now that I'm back I really have no idea what it's about.
Interesting spin as of late, here in the Springs. Because the city chose to cut police, fire, hospital, and street lights (in addition to $100 million in employee benefits and more than 1000 city employees), conservatives are calling it 'punitive' in an effort by the liberals to 'punish' the good people of Colorado Springs for voting down a liberal 'social agenda' and 'unfair taxation.'
It's really irritating, because they've managed to take a realistic result of what happens when you have huge deficits in a city's budget (cutting essential services) and turned it into a talking point about how the liberals are punishing us for not voting for their socialistic tax hikes.
I had a coworker tell me that them cutting street lights was because it was a 'high visibility' way to punish the people who didn't vote for tax increases.
P.S. Charlatan - not all of us.  |
It morphed into a rant about taxes in General, but then I tried to bring it back to Municiple Spending.
I see both sides of the arguement on this one.
Taking Toronto for example, I can assure you that if the politicians here were forced to cut say 500 million from their budget of 9 billion, they would cut where the public would notice it the MOST. They would close the Sheppard Subway (already been threatened), the would close libraries, (already been threatened), they would close pools, parks, day care, etc. In short, cut where the people of the city will notice it the most so they will scream the loudest. (They could easily cut 500 million from their budget and the public at large would never notice 1 iota of difference in the delivery of services within the City of Toronto.)
I think that in the case of Colorado Springs the Municiple Government is so strapped for money - they have no choice frankly. They are short 28 million bucks in an overall budget of $212 million or about 14%.
I'm sure that Colorado Springs has their fixed costs and their varible costs. Lowering fixed costs would be pretty tough, so all they can do is lower variable costs. Unfortunately, this will mean making major cuts on the variable side of things - which includes the number of municiple workers.
Plus, nothing scares conservatives more than the threat of reducing the number of cops out there. Cons tend to be the fearful type that think that society is inherinently bad and only waiting to do them in. Hence more cops with guns that go bang good, more government anything else - bad.
Getting back to Toronto, imagine what would happen here if the people of T.O. forced a 14% budget cut to the City. Based on a 9 billion annual budget, that would mean a cut of 1.25 billion. I cannot imagine that.