Pay Now or Pay Later
The Bakersfield Californian published an insightful editorial yesterday titled “County cuts will go deeper than dollars.” Its message: Even “non-mission critical” programs, such as libraries, positively impact the community in a way that is difficult to measure strictly in dollars and cents. Closing a library – or even reducing its hours – impacts everyone from senior citizens to job seekers to students. It closes a door that opens to the future for so many. It’s a compelling, and often overlooked, fact. County leaders around the state understand it, but unfortunately, our counties are facing massive budget deficits and difficult decisions are being made.
Now let’s take this one-step further since the elimination or reduction of even “mission critical” programs have become part of the state budget discussion. Think about the child who isn’t immunized or doesn’t have a good breakfast each day. How well does he or she do in school? How does this impact the students around them? Or the single mother who no longer gets assistance paying for child care. How does she keeping working? Or does she just leave her child alone at home. Or what about the individual who longer receives mental-health treatment. Does he end up on the street? Or in your county jail? The list of potential impacts goes on and on. The list of those indirectly impacted grows and grows. While many people look at these programs as just helping a certain percentage of the population, they need to be looked at as an investment in California’s social infrastructure.
There’s a famous commercial from the early ‘70s that featured the slogan, “Pay me now or pay me later.” That logic holds true today. If we, as Californians, don’t pay now, we will definitely pay later.
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David Liebler is the Director of Public Affairs and Member Services for the California State Association of Counties. He can be reached at dliebler.at.counties.org. |
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Our County is another that is grappling with cuts to libraries. We are under no illusion that libraries are not important. That is not the point. The point is we simply don’t have the money. Revenue priorities have been directed to special groups and not the general population. Most of our funding is earmarked under federal and state programs for special services and entitlements such mental health, welfare, in Home Support Services for the elderly and disabled, child support collection or child/adult protective services. Less than one quarter of our budget is discretionary and that must go to fund public safety, basic government functions (Treasury, Auditor, Clerk/Elections, Assessor, County Counsel, Admin.,) as well as special general public services such as libraries. (Functions such as Planning and Building are offset by fees charged to service users.)
If public safety is cut beyond a certain point, then the fundamental order, safety and peace of communities is affected. This renders them unfit to host families. In other words, without public safety, (Sheriff, DA, Public Defender, Probation, Jail,) having an open library pales in significance.
If basic government functions are cut, then there is: no one to pay vendors; no one to do the banking, payroll and book keeping; no one to assess taxes; no one to collect them; no one to do payroll; no one to hold elections; no one to make and approve contracts; no one to direct implementation of policies.
As a Supervisor, I am told that if I cut the Sheriff any more, my communities will have as much as a two hour response time to their call to 911. Probation will no longer be able to monitor sexual predators. The D.A. will send out a list of offenses he will no longer be able to prosecute. We can’t cut the Public Defender because defendants have Constitutional rights to a defense. The jail requires minimum staffing. It is always full to the max and it already requires a wait of 6-9 months and an appointment to serve time in jail on lesser offenses. We have no code enforcement officer – she went in last year’s cuts. That takes care of our larger departments. We have already cut a quarter of our workforce in the General Funded Departments. Many have only a few employees left.
We have decided to cut our Amador plan fire station in north County. This means that it could take from 45 minutes to an hour for emergency personnel to respond to an accident on Interstate 5. (The other day it took 45 minutes to get the jaws of life to one accident.) At least one small retirement communitee will have at least an hour response time.
By all means, let’s keep the libraries open. I, for one, volunteer to set up my card table and bake cupcakes to sell, because I don’t know where else we’re going to find the money.