I have caught all sorts of hell from County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins for my criticism of the Commission's passage of a super regressive tax to fund mental health services and general county operations. But his has been done and it will stick, for a while anyway.
Now we all need to keep a sharp eye on how this money will be spent. Which nonprofit organizations will be lining up the get the mental health money to provide services? Because I can only assume that is where that money will go. Since there was no plan formulated on how this money was to be spent, it will be a free for all as the money gets doled out. At the very least this Commission needs to come up with some measurable outcomes for the use of this money. How do we know it will be used effectively?
Maggie pretty much said in some emails to me she didn't care about her political career, that this was the right thing to do. I never argued that providing services was bad. It was the funding mechanism and lack of planning I was criticizing. And on top of it the Commission raised taxes to cover up their total mismanagement of the overall budget for operations. And they raised it many times the amount needed to correct the problem.
Meanwhile, the heavy load of these taxes is put on the poor and middle class.
Now we all need to keep a sharp eye on how this money will be spent. Which nonprofit organizations will be lining up the get the mental health money to provide services? Because I can only assume that is where that money will go. Since there was no plan formulated on how this money was to be spent, it will be a free for all as the money gets doled out. At the very least this Commission needs to come up with some measurable outcomes for the use of this money. How do we know it will be used effectively?
Maggie pretty much said in some emails to me she didn't care about her political career, that this was the right thing to do. I never argued that providing services was bad. It was the funding mechanism and lack of planning I was criticizing. And on top of it the Commission raised taxes to cover up their total mismanagement of the overall budget for operations. And they raised it many times the amount needed to correct the problem.
Meanwhile, the heavy load of these taxes is put on the poor and middle class.
3 comments:
Don't worry Jim, next the county will approve Santolina and wahla more jobs more people moving to Albuquerque more tax revenue, what more could we ask for? I hope Aubrey Dunce puts up an oil Derek too cause they might just have to drink oil cause there ain't no water in them there hills. Aren't you glad you are out of the game Jim? Able to sit back and laugh at what passes for leadership?
It's ironic that someone would think they're risking their political career by kowtowing to corporations. In the fairy tale democracy I live in that actually would be true, but politics as practiced today is the opposite so you have to wonder why someone would say that.
I'd originally intended to take this opportunity to say that two names is enough and I wish people would stop using three. You're wasting a lot of our time by making us have to read and write and say all those extra names -- 33 1/3 percent more of it.
I decided instead to write a blog post about this subject on my own web log, Bubba Muntzer, which Jim graciously links to.
"Kowtow, which is borrowed from kau tau in Cantonese"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowtow
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