Former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, a former congressman as well, enjoyed sharing an old bit of Washington wisdom on what to do when times were tough and government budgets were at risk of being whacked.
“Close the Washington Monument.”
That’s right. If the taxpayers seemed cranky, threaten to shut down the venerable tribute to ol’ George. That will put the fear of God into the Great Unwashed — and things can go on as usual.
Local taxpayers know how the game is played. Making noise about property taxes and overspending on education? You know what the Town Council and school board will say: Cut the high school football team. Close the swimming pools.
Even the most docile taxpayer is a bit uneasy about “Big Government,” but those who benefit the most from keeping it big are effective at being an elusive target.
Some jurisdictions with a more militant, taxpayer-group, Tea Party, Libertarian flavor than Connecticut occasionally rises up and launch referenda to privatize and whack and slash, with marginal success at cutting back the monster.
Quite aside from the most obvious government institutions that could theoretically have a target on their butts, those most clever at preserving and protecting the government trough also have created a shadowy underworld of pseudo-government, of “public-private partnerships,” of “regional planners” and land-use gurus.
The bottom line: these largely unaccountable folks are as much a part of “big government” as are the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Whether through legislative fiat, slush-fund consulting contracts, or simply being smart enough to stand around in rooms where lots of money is being dispensed, this segment of big government is even harder to cut back on than the more easily identifiable parts of the government behemoth.
The army of unelected, not-quite-official government paycheck beneficiaries are known in the world of economics as being engaged in “rent-seeking behavior”: Finding a way to enhance their welfare at the expense of, oh, say, your welfare and mine.
That is not to say that the occasional, murky, consulting contract or “White Paper” might not, by pure accident, actually benefit all of us, but the real point of it all is to keep the dollars flowing from taxpayers to consultants with pals in the General Assembly and Congress.
Don’t you feel the thrill knowing that a new $4.2 million federal grant is sloshing around, so that assorted planners, consultants and hangers-on can “update” plans for the famous “Knowledge Corridor” between Hartford and Springfield?
Never heard of it? Not to worry. There are plenty of planners who have been living off taxpayer money and assorted grants for years now, to publicize the benefits of the Hartford-to-Springfield Garden of Eden.
You’ll never be able to track exactly where that $4.2 million is going; it’s a typical “planning” mess that tosses bags of gold at “regional planning agencies” and all manner of politically connected consultants who would love to “plan” for mixed-use housing and transportation and commerce.
Feel better, don’t you?
Under the murky rubric of the ‘Knowledge Corridor,” the shadowy, big-government types have been feasting on federal, regional and state monies for almost a decade now, marketing and training and planning and advocating up a storm — with no particular responsibility to actually accomplish anything for which they would be held accountable.
To be sure, the latest Knowledge Corridor federal windfall will definitely foster “regional development”: half of the money goes to planners in Connecticut; half will sail across the border to Massachusetts.
By the way, this is not “big government” spending your money. This is “planning.” That’s different. Very different.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
