Back in the winter, the Putnam County Sentinel ran articles on consecutive weeks covering village council business conducted by two different local municipalities. Both reports covered updates from those villages’ respective officials regarding the future of water and sewer rates for their residents.
The first publication reported a discussion over the future of Columbus Grove’s sewer rates, with a brief look at how that village has managed the payment of debts incurred to finance their sewer improvement project since 2010.
The next week, Sentinel readers were informed of the village of Kalida’s intent to raise water and sewer rates.
While it is all-too-often fun to initiate most discussions of libertarian principles when focused on topics and issues of a federal nature and occasionally on state-level concerns, these seemingly mundane stories involving local, municipal governing bodies and their determinations on sewer usage rates offer an excellent lesson about opportunities to illustrate libertarian-minded governance to our fellow residents at a more down-home level.
In this case, here in Putnam County, the best discussion for us would be centered on the contrast between the two villages’ mindsets with regard to charging residents/municipal sewer customers for usage.
On one hand, Columbus Grove’s local government can assure its residents their rates will not be going up due in large part to what appears to be effective handling of debt service for the sewer project over the years since it was implemented. This is made possible primarily if the same governing body handles all its fiscal affairs appropriately.
On the other hand, Kalida’s local government seemed intent to raise rates simply because they could.
Among the key components of libertarian ideology is responsible handling of public coffers – a much less daunting issue to affect at the local level than anywhere else. Examining the efforts of Columbus Grove to put themselves a payment ahead and have the municipal government in a better position to react to unexpected developments down-the-road enables Libertarians to highlight the benefits of local fiscal responsibility.
Contrasted against the story from Kalida, Libertarians can more fittingly argue for restraint in matters of spending and taxation.
To paraphrase an old adage, “All government should be local.”
Let’s be ready to make the case for our principles whenever the opportunity presents itself.