Backroom Report 8-4-08

When government provides a service, it pays no property tax on the land or buildings used in providing the service, and no ad valorem taxes on the vehicles or equipment it uses. Meanwhile the private businesses providing that same service must pay those taxes, placing them at a competitive disadvantage.

Plus when a government provided service operates inefficiently it subsidizes itself from the taxpayers. Private businesses don’t have that luxury.

These private businesses are the bedrock of our community. They are the ones who buy the ads in the high school football program, donate money to send band students to camp, and support other charitable endeavors in our community.

Conservatives and libertarians believe that government should not… let me rephrase that… government should NEVER compete with private business. It’s not a level playing field and it hurts us all.

When I served on the Bartow County Board of Education back in the 1990’s, after-school programs were the new rage. School systems across the nation began implementing taxpayer-funded programs to entertain… I mean educate children after the lengthy school day ended.

However, we as a school board had another idea… instead of using tax dollars to provide yet another government program in competition with private taxpaying childcare centers… we structured a plan to allow the childcare businesses to provide the after school programs using school facilities.

The result? Everybody wins! School administrators got the after-school programs they wanted. Parents had an alternative to their latchkey kids riding the bus home to an empty house. The private childcare owners paid fees to the school district to use the facilities, and no taxpayer funds were used to subsidize the program.

So needless to say I was shocked when I found out that the current Bartow County BOE has just scrapped that plan in favor of a government run program to be paid for by the taxpayers of Bartow County.

Now at this point some of you parents using the program are saying, “Wait a minute! We’re going to pay $35 a week to the school system for our kid to use the program.”

Yes, but let’s look at those stubborn things known as details… Under this new plan the taxpayers will fully fund this program. So what happens to the $35 you parents are paying? According to an article in last Thursday’s Cartersville Daily Tribune, all of the fees paid by parents “will go to the principals who will be able to spend the funds on students and faculty members.” Yes, you heard that right!

Here’s the bottom line…

The Bartow County Board of Education will now go into direct competition with local taxpaying privately operated childcare centers… and will use our tax dollars to do so… and will take the fees paid by the parents for the program and give that money to the principals to use as a slush fund at each school. No wonder the principals were in favor of making the change.

Little by little socialism continues to creep into every aspect of our lives… from Washington DC right down here to Bartow County. The next time your charity or organization has trouble raising the funds it needs… don’t blame local business people… blame a government that continues to squeeze the life out of free market capitalism.