Local taxes are for local uses

There are bad ideas, there are terrible ideas, and then there’s this: An ordinance for consideration before the Mat-Su Borough Assembly tonight would allow use of local tax money to influence statewide ballot initiatives.

We can certainly see the appeal. Seen purely as an investment, spending money to influence bond money to come our way may yield a hearty return. Also, the state is always passing legislation with large impacts on the Mat-Su Borough. Maybe we could buy ourselves a seat at the table?

But that’s not how we see this.

We see this expenditure of tax money as a potentially significant drain on public finances at a time when we can ill afford them. We also see this as growing the politicization of a body — the Mat-Su Borough Assembly — that is still one of the few places where elected people are able, with some regularity, to reach bipartisan consensus.

If this current assembly is different from its past incarnations, it is in its penchant for weighing in on state and national issues.

If you’re a regular reader, you remember these fights: the long debate about redrawing of military training area boundaries, or multiple meetings discussing weighing in on rewrites to state rules governing water bodies. The list goes on.

While those issues weren’t always very controversial and didn’t always take up assembly time, they often did, with the end result usually a letter telling the Legislature “this is what the assembly wants.”

We don’t want to see borough staff or officials allocating precious time that could be better spent finding a solution to school funding issues or helping alleviate the strain the various construction projects have put on borough staff.

And now, this ordinance proposes adding money to the mix. Money to be spend on what, exactly? Advertisements? A lobbyist? And how much money are we talking about? Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

The ordinance to be considered tonight doesn’t answer any of these questions and should not be approved as it is.