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The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners are putting the finishing touches on the coming fiscal year’s budget and normally at this time, it would be prudent to advise this board to cut back on unnecessary spending, to reduce the tax rate and, in recognition of the critical state of the national economy, to take every stop possible to eliminate all excesses such as their planned purchase of a $125,000 portable stage on which to stand. In the nearly twenty years of publication for this newspaper, we can’t recall a single time that the Emptyprize has ever advocated spending less, taxing less or being conservative with the funds of the taxpayers. Therefore, we can’t expect any help from them in this time of crisis. In fact, the Emptyprize --- a Washington Post owned publication --- continues to push the board to raise taxes and spend more money. The Post itself is beginning to reel in the national economy with it’s own fiscal picture worsening as it’s readership drops and revenues tank. The Post is a little like Maryland, one of only two states in the nation that raised taxes during this time of recession. But just because there are jackasses and fools running the Emptyprize and the Post, there is no need for our local officials to ignore their responsibilities to the people of St. Mary’s County and to the county employees. The State of Maryland recently hiked the assessment rate on property and the only way to negate that huge and obscene increase is for the commissioners to lower the tax rate by about 8 cents. There are two foolish Democrats on the Board, Tommy Mattingly and Jackie Russell and one Democrat who twists in the wind on every issue of importance. Russell will likely be tossed out of office by the voters in the next election for his failing to keep his campaign promises to properly manage growth. Russell’s votes to open up the Valley Lee and Piney Point area for explosive growth due to his tainted vote to allow sewer at St. George’s Peninsula and his vote to expand the Lexington Park Development District is reason enough to give him the axe. Mattingly has reached his expiration time and now that he no longer has to face the voters, he is working behind the scenes to impoverish the county, help out a liberal agenda of expanding government at the very time government needs to pare spending and is paying back his good old boy pals. Dement’s recent votes are disappointing and his record of voting right on key issues has now been tainted. Only Larry Jarboe is a dependable friend of the taxpayer, a good manager and an official who shows he has common sense. How Dan Raley wants to be remembered is now up to him. He needs to lead Kenny Dement in the right direction and join with Jarboe on cutting out wasteful spending. At this point, if the Board cuts the tax rate and stops blowing money, they won’t have to cut county staff. But should the Board abdicate their responsibility to cut spending, and revenues continue to free fall due to the economy, there will be job cuts, firings and layoffs of county staff next year. Just look at Montgomery County and other local governments where layoffs are already taking place. Raising taxes is not the answer as the taxpayers have no more to give, they already gave. It is time to stop the silly spending, it is time to eliminate daffy deals that give millions to millionaires for preserving property that they have no intention of developing and in many cases can’t even perc. No one can determine how the economy will turn out for the next few years but only a fool can’t see what is now in front of us.
Buy the Portable Stage, Add Nooses All across the nation, state and local governments are struggling to meet their responsibilities to provide services with efficiency and maintain revenue levels while the average citizen has less money due to spiraling energy costs, insurance rates, taxes and basic costs of food and transportation. The St. Mary’s Commissioners have yet to prove that they understand the crisis in which we exist. This past week they partially funded a request by sheriff’s deputies to increase their retirement benefits which the sheriff claims that is necessary to keep the deputies from taking jobs elsewhere. Three days later, several members of the board were stunned to realize that pay levels for senior county staffers had risen to the point that 84 staffers now make more than $70,000 annually. Of those, positions almost half are deputies, for which no college education is required. In addition to uniforms, vehicles and living in a county with a nice quality of life, fully half of the deputies retire on medical disability. It’s a good job and it is highly unlikely any of these officers will leave to go elsewhere, but should they choose to do, so be it. It is clear that the belts need to be tightened in St. Mary’s County. The commissioners, so intent on being onstage, have yet to cut out a portable stage, complete with a sound system and lighting for events where they can file up on the stage and make grand appearances. The only thing missing from the stage are five nooses and five trapdoors, for if they don’t cut the tax rate to negate the obscene tax assessments levied this year by the state, then that final ceremony would be an appropriate ceremony, much like the crazy fool county executive in Montgomery County deserves. Like the portable stage in St. Mary’s County, at a cost of $125,000, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has committed that county to build him a $65,000 bathroom, at the very time that the taxpayers are lucky to have a pot to piss in. His arrogance is typical of many Maryland officials. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, in a demonstration of sheer lunacy, recently gave a $7 million grant to the private baseball club building a stadium in Waldorf. This same amount of funds could have put locomotive sets on the existing CSX tracks and started commuter rail service into Southern Maryland per the Governor’s promise. All we have so far for this promise is more O’Bull from O’Malley. Maybe the St. Mary’s Commissioners could order an extra noose for their portable stage and invite the governor to join them in their political exit. The St. Mary’s Commissioners need to stop the spending on non-governmental organizations and remember that tax dollars are for the vital and appropriate expenses of funding roads, schools and public safety. The constant expenditure of funds on the feel-good liberal agenda must stop and it if means the voters must clear out the commissioner board in the next election then that is would should happen even if it wouldn’t be as much fun as seeing them dangling from their stage. The St. Mary’s Board needs to cut the tax rate to negate the assessment, it is called maintaining the constant yield, and something no board has done since the Republican Board did three times between 1994 and 1998. The St. Mary’s Board’s support for a big brother spy in the sky, roaming inspectors bothering businesses trying to use their vehicles for advertising and giving in to every whim of the developers, with the exception of Commissioner Larry Jarboe, shows that the time is rapidly approaching for a change and charter government wasn’t the way to change it, a normal old fashioned election will work real good. Commissioner Dement needs to listen, he won’t find anyone who wants to pay higher taxes, with the possible exception of a few left-wing loonies. If he wants to continue to serve he needs to continue to listen to the people of the county. Commissioners Raley and Mattingly are term limited, which is not a good idea. They were good commissioners when they could run again. Russell’s complete lack of ethics in voting for a project which benefited his employer and his reversal of a campaign theme of properly managing growth due to his vote to expand the Lexington Park development district in the rural preservation area, shows he is just another silly guy in over his head. Go ahead, boys, get the stage but don’t forget the trapdoors and the nooses.
The St. Mary’s Commissioners can’t expect their staff to cut spending if they don’t give them public instructions to do so. This year, we have seen the Board take firm actions to reduce spending proposals brought forth such as $2 million ballfields and $600,000 horse stables. Still sitting on the table is a $125,000 portable stage, which Commissioners Jackie Russell and Tommy Mattingly, always fans of standing on a stage and enjoying the roar of the crowd and the smell of the greasepaint, think is a responsible use of the taxpayer’s funds. Its time to get real. The public got a big surprise this year when on the first day of the new year they got the sticker shock of a huge round of increased property assessments. These property assessments by the state are then applied to the county’s tax rate and big jumps in property taxes will be passed on to property owners. State officials say that they simply assess the property’s values, so higher taxes are not their fault. Local officials say that the state raises the assessment and the higher taxes are not their fault. The truth is that an eight cent reduction in the tax rate is needed to prevent property taxes from going up at exactly the time that property values have fallen. If the State of Maryland truly thinks your property is worth what they have changed the value to, how about them buying it from you? It won’t happen, because values have dropped, like the bubble the housing market was, it has popped and yet the elected officials think you have to continue to fund all the desires of the bureaucrats and special interest groups who never found a spending plan they didn’t like. The danger of having Democrats in office is clearly evident now, with three Democrats as St. Mary’s Commissioners and only one of the three, Dan Raley, having a conservative attitude towards your money. The other two Democrats are sincere officials but need to get a grip on what the economy has evolved to in the past two years, the dire economic straights that the nation is in and stop all increases in spending. The Board needs to put it straight to the department heads, to come in with budgets that are at least 10 percent less than last year and find ways to give adequate services to the public while cutting out the fat. The two Republicans on the Board, who are cautious with spending, need to keep their eye on the ball and say no to outrageous spending proposals such as a retroactive retirement increase, going back ten years, for deputies. This proposal has been brought forward by two members of the retirement board who will personally benefit from the increase in benefits and propel St. Mary’s County into a pension position such as put New York City into bankruptcy, a police pension the city could not afford. But the politicians are afraid of the deputies and are afraid to say no, as they have to stand for election in two years, at least three of them. The Sheriff is afraid to stand on the side of the taxpayers as well. All of these officials should have the guts and the intellect to just say no to spending proposals which are unfair to the taxpayer, pay a personal dividend of thousands of dollars to two high-ranking officials of the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department and the treasury cannot afford.
The purpose of taxing the masses was initially set forth when income taxes were first promulgated, for building our infrastructure, defending the nation from foreign enemies and for the vast costs of public works. Then the Democratic Party discovered that using public funds to bribe large parts of the electorate could win elections and the flood gates opened. When the Democrats aren’t conniving on how to make hay with tax funds, the Republicans are out to make their pals rich. Since the War on Poverty began, billions have been spent on the poor and yet we have more of them. Tax breaks for the rich are more plentiful than ever but the investors and corporate leaders keep moving good jobs overseas, putting the middle class workers out of jobs. We have a system of interstate highways, all of them with bridges which are dangerous and this great public transportation system was built with the disastrous combination of graft, greed and low bid. From corrupt politicians to corrupt labor union officials to corrupt corporate executives, the public’s money has been emptied out of their pockets and into the pockets of crooks. What hasn’t been doled out to worthless sots who don’t and won’t work, has been spent on luxuries for crooks. Meanwhile, the working poor and the working middle classes continue to go to work, pay for college for their children, send their kids off to war to die and then the flimsy inspections of our bridges fail to prevent the road from dropping beneath them as they come home from work and crashing into a river. This area has a bridge which has already been closed once due to major structural damage yet the State of Maryland is only this past year making the first move towards construction of a new span over the Patuxent River. State officials continue to sing the tune that the bridge is safe but they can’t point to one complete inspection of the underwater pilings by divers with cameras. If they have such proof, let us see it. Pax River is the economic engine of Southern Maryland and the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge is a key transportation artery for this economy. Maryland officials better heed this warning. Get a new bridge underway quick. If we had the money wasted on Baltimore City and PG County schools; needless public facilities such as buying more state parkland when we can’t manage the parks we have, in just one year, this bridge could be built. They can still run those schools, just cut out the waste, graft and corruption. Can we really expect these politicians to take their hands out of the till? Not as long as these jurisdictions are run as South American Banana Republics. Take at look at Baltimore’s bridges the next time you go to an Orioles game, take a good look at their soaring overpasses and think about the money that is fed into the corruption while the infrastructure fractures. Make sure you keep a St. Christopher’s medal in your vehicle. The truth of the matter is that the Solomon’s bridge is not the only public infrastructure which has been delayed while burgeoning social spending spirals. We need a new four or six lane bridge over the Potomac at Morgantown, we need a ferry boat system for the southern Chesapeake Bay between Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. We need the Purple Line of Metro to connect Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties inside the Beltway and we need commuter rail into Southern Maryland. Will we continue to let Banana Republic politics guide our future? |
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