Keep your eye on the nut in this year's budgetary shell game

Frontiersman editorial board

The combination of serious budget woes and an important election cycle this year has prompted legislators around the state to treat us to a disturbing shell game in which taxes, services and draconian budget cuts are all hidden beneath partisan rhetoric and shifted from one jurisdiction to another -- and from one wallet to another.

The most recent round has the House slipping a fiscal plan, under the shell of rare bi-partisan cooperation, to the Senate, where the GOP majority quickly lifted one corner and yanked out some House Democrat construction projects. The Senate plan more closely follows Gov. Frank Murkowski's original recommendation, and provides less for education than the House proposal. On paper, the differences may not look too striking.

As with any skillfully executed slight of hand, there's more here than meets the eye. We make a mistake when we allow ourselves to consider the state budget on simple dollars and cents terms. The primary fiscal function of the government is to convert revenue into services. The government doesn't budget for profit. Once revenue is in the legislature's hands, it becomes potential services -- it can't be anything else. In the case of our tax dollars, whether the state collects them in the form of income or sales tax, or whether local governments collect them in the form of sales or property taxes, when we pay them, the money is transformed into potential services -- instantly.

While government can be streamlined, we make a mistake when we assume it can be eliminated, and we even pay a long-term price when we cut government back too far. There is a bare minimum of services required to run a healthy community, and our collective buying power is greater than our individual buying power. If the state fails to adequately fund education, we have to decide whether to meet that need on a local basis, or reduce the quality of the service. Unfortunately, the borough is also hamstrung by state regulations. It can only fund local education to a percentage of state funding, limiting the borough's ability to make up difference. And, even if we could respond locally, it would take the form of increased property taxes. The Legislature, claiming heroic fiscal responsibility, will have successfully slid the shell to local governments -- governments that are limited by state red tape from adequately solving the problem.

If you really want to know what your government is providing, you have to look under the shell and see if there's a nut or a worm there. Don't settle for a Legislative worm if it only means you'll have to pay for a local nut in the end.