Why We Should Fear The Status Quo
Posted on 13 May 2010
Someone on our local West Orange email list commented on her fear that the status quo would continue with the election of Parisi, McCartney, and Cirilo to the town council. Someone else replied:
I would like to know what is meant by the statement “If the Status Quo continues.” Is it a certain group and other feel left out. Or is it just something to stir the pot again since their candidate lost?
Speaking for myself, it’s definitely more than that. This isn’t like losing a football game or a high school debate.
My complaint is against the status quo: Spending only ratchets up. Sometimes way up.
One person recently defended the council by noting that they held about half of their budgets to zero over the past decade. That’s the defense: sometimes zero percent. But other times, the increase was 15%.
Flat or up, never down, averaging 7% per year.
That’s the status quo.
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The same person said:
No matter what is said here, the arithmetic is wnat it is. Even if huge cuts to program are implemented, these cuts translate to pennies a day to taxpayers.
This mentality is precisely why the ratchet works. I actually blogged on this topic here in 2007.
At the time, Joe DiVincenzo pleaded with Essex county residents, “Our penny has done so much. If you like what we have done in the last 4 1/2 years, please support us. We need that extra half a penny.” That’s a direct quote.
“Our penny” refers to the one cent per $100 of assessed property value that went to Essex County Parks. “That extra half-penny” refers to his request to raise it to one-and-a-half cents.
Do you see how it works? When DiVincenzo wanted to raise his parks budget by 50%, he asked for just “an extra half-penny”. It’s easy to add costs because they’re so small. They’re almost cute.
At the same time, this mentality makes it almost impossible to cut programs. Even massive, horrific cuts give us only “pennies a day”, so they can’t be worth it.
That’s the ratchet.
That’s the status quo.
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Similarly, in describing the recently defeated BOE budget, the poster said:
[I]t is an austere budget in context of existing programs, contracts and fixed costs.
Businesses and households don’t think of budgets without cuts as “austere budgets”.
Governments are bound by strictures that businesses and households are not. I recognize that. Yet if spending only ratchets up, we will increase our costs far faster than we can support them.
That’s what it means when “an austere budget” is the .3% budget hike that you alternate with the 15% budget hikes.
That’s the status quo.
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The poster noted that the BOE budget “Took 80 lay-offs to stay at near zero.”
But where did the 80 staff come from? Did we, at some point, say, “It’s only pennies a day per taxpayer to fund the following programs”?
Eventually those pennies add up. Then, when times are bad, we have to “cut back.”
But we’ve just proved that even in the worst economy in decades, we won’t actually cut back. We’ll only make it so we’re not increasing (much).
I understand why. Cutbacks hurt. And even when we struggle to limit the cuts to 80 people, we find that our increased spending during good times has caused pain among our employees — and our taxpayers, of course — during bad times.
That’s the status quo.
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I am not looking for “something to stir the pot again since [my] candidate lost”. I would love to see Parisi, McCartney, and Cirilo work with the rest of the council to establish real changes. I wish them the best in their roles, both new and continuing. If I can help in any way, I will.
But we have reason to fear the status quo.
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