Weekly Briefing

Of snow removal and other essential services

Much of North Carolina took it on the chin from Mother Nature this past weekend. Snow and ice piled up in several parts of the state and left things, much to the self-satisfied amusement of just about anyone who’s ever lived even a few miles north of North Carolina, generally paralyzed for the beginning of the work week.

From Cherokee County to Currituck, transplants and returning natives who have at some point lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line shook their heads disdainfully and remarked on our state’s generally woeful capacity for snow removal. You know how this went and may have even uttered it yourself:

“I can’t believe four or five inches of snow can shut down practically an entire state! When we lived in Pittsburgh (or Buffalo or Chicago or Omaha), they would have had all this stuff plowed before sunrise.”

There are at least two obvious rejoinders to such comments – one obvious and the other somewhat less so.

The first and most obvious response is that it simply doesn’t make sense for North Carolina to invest a lot of money in the kind of snow removal equipment they have in colder climes. With the relative infrequency of significant snows in most of the state, we would simply be wasting tax dollars to go down such a road. It would make no more sense than it would, say, for some burg on the prairie to invest the kind of resources Raleigh puts into leaf removal. One might call this the “shoulder shrug” response:

“What are you gonna’ do? This is just one of the things you have to put up with to live in this part of the country.”

On second thought

A second and less obvious response, however, might examine and consider this issue a little more thoroughly. Aside from the intensely practical questions regarding how much these every-so-often periods of gridlock are really costing our state and its economy in lives and money (and whether there might just be a way to modify some of our existing equipment and personnel to allow for quicker and more thorough responses than are possible now), there is a broader philosophical issue that’s worth exploring. One might call this the “light bulb” response:

“Hmmm, you may have got a point there. Just because North Carolina has always responded this way in the past, doesn’t mean we have to do so forever. As a matter of fact there are probably a whole slew of issues on which we might fare better if we put our heads together and adopted more of a ‘can do’ approach.”

The fact of the matter, of course, is that the main force behind North Carolina’s lack of snow removal capacity is one simple thing: money. For a host of reasons – many of them never closely examined – elected officials have simply never appropriated the kinds of funds that would be necessary to get the job done.

This is not the case in a limited number of private communities and shopping centers, where people and businesses have banded together to clear the roads and parking lots, but it is on a huge proportion of the public highways and city streets. There, on weeks such as this, thousands of comfortably well-off North Carolinians struggle mightily at the risk of their lives and their $30,000 cars to slog through a single lane of half-melted slush.

By all indications, this is not a philosophical decision driven by a conservative, anti-government bias. People overwhelmingly like and enjoy high quality public services when it comes to things they can’t easily provide for themselves like trash removal, good roads, water and sewer service and snow removal. They intuitively grasp the benefit of communities coming together in such instances. Life is easier and better. People have more time to devote to their families, their friends, their jobs, their communities and themselves. They have less to worry about. They have more freedom.

At what price services?

The roadblock, of course, is that dreaded five-letter word that has been used to divide Americans for centuries: taxes. North Carolina’s elected leaders have made the calculation that their constituents would rather have the few pennies that each will retain as a result of not raising taxes to pay for snow removal than they would the snow removal itself.

This may, in fact be an accurate assessment, though it would be interesting to see what the public would say if it were ever actually asked. Notwithstanding the constant drumbeat of propaganda from the anti-government right, North Carolinians clearly like the idea of high quality public services and structures. As bond issue after bond issue attests, people are often willing to pay more in taxes when they can see a tangible community benefit.

And while officials are asking the public about what they might be willing to pay not to have worry about risking their lives driving to work or losing their children’s Spring breaks, it might also be very instructive to see what they’d say in response to some questions about some other essential services – health care for example.

Not that long ago, the right-wing Pope Civitas Institute conducted one of its typically stilted polls in an obvious effort to show that North Carolinians wanted no public involvement in health care. The results, however, were clearly not what they had anticipated. When asked if they would support a health care system run by the federal government and be willing to pay higher taxes to support it, a large majority of North Carolinians said “yes, as matter of fact we would.” Again, contrary to years of misinformation about the supposed inherent evils of taxes, most people showed that they’re actually willing to chip in a little bit more to enjoy a richer menu of essential services and structures.

In other words, people may wisely mistrust politicians and be wary of corruption in large institutions (both public and private) but they’re not stupid; they understand that they will be better off and live happier, healthier, freer lives if public structures and services can relieve them of worry and the need to fend for themselves in a dog-eat-dog existence.

As noted earlier, the only real question is how much would people be willing to pay? While there is clearly some point at which average North Carolinians would say “no mas,” it’s hard to imagine that most people wouldn’t be willing to pay substantially more to be relieved of the hassle, worry and threats to their physical and financial well-being that accompanies our current disaster of a health care system. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine that most North Carolinians wouldn’t also be willing to pay, say, 10% more per year to know that our education and mental health systems were truly of world class quality.

Who should pay?

Indeed, given North Carolina’s tax structure, the calculation may only need to apply to people’s attitudes toward the rich – since their state and local taxes are so much lower as a proportion of income than everyone else’s. If North Carolina only increased state and local taxes on the wealthy to the point at which they felt the same bite on their incomes as everyone else, the state would be well-positioned to plug many of its current holes and, indeed, dramatically improve and increase the services and structures it provides. One underreported story from last week was the passage of a ballot initiative in Oregon that bumped up taxes on the corporations and the rich by $727 million in order to assure that essential services would be preserved.

It would be fascinating to see what North Carolinians would do if they had the opportunity to express their opinions on such an idea. Would most North Carolinians be willing to tax the wealthy at the same overall, effective rates that most everyone else pays in order to assure that our schools and mental health systems (and snow removal crews) no longer had to do things on the cheap?

If we can ever figure out a way to have a fair debate on the matter that isn’t completely overrun by wads of corporate cash, don’t bet against it.

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.