Ross Roundup: Fool's Gold
Randy Ross, The Sunday Sun
June 5, 2006
Good morning to my friends and neighbors in Eastern Oklahoma County. I have always believed in running government like a business. I recognize that you cannot always do that but believe in the theory. This brings me to another “good idea” called the “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” (TABOR) being promoted that seems to me like I am being sold fool's gold.
While I was the controller of a major manufacturing company, we had a large customer choose to purchase products from a competitor. This was a big blow to our company, as they represented nearly 20 percent of our business at the time. It required us to adjust our total budget and operations. We were forced to lay off a number of people and work with the income we had from our remaining customers. We were forced to curtail normal maintenance on some non-critical equipment, our buildings we did not paint or do routine maintenance, parking lot repairs were forgone, we terminated our night time janitorial contract and a myriad of other cost saving measures. Of course, we still had to maintain enough to keep our other customers happy. I think you can get the picture.
Two years later we signed contracts with two new customers and regained some of the sales from the customer we lost. The end result was that we gained 30 percent more in sales than we had. Great news, however, we were required to ramp expenditures up for the increased production, rehire employees and begin looking at doing maintenance that we had deferred for two years. We found that in many cases it was more expensive to do the repairs currently than had we just done them each year. But if you don't have the money, that's the decision you have to make. In any event, the good times were starting to come back.
This brings me back to this TABOR and other proposals to limit government to 6 percent or some Consumer Price Indexation. This sounds good, but look at where our state has been over the past few years. We had large revenue shortfalls for a few years. The state did the same as my company. They did not repair roads, reduced the numbers of employees, increased classroom sizes, did not fund retirement systems and did not do routine maintenance on buildings, parks and other public properties. Now that we have hit a period of prosperity it seems to me we should fix our roads, repair buildings and in general do the things that should be done. Then we can look at some sort of rebate. Oklahoma already has some of the toughest budgeting constraints in the nation by requiring a balanced budget and not allowing any tax increases unless it goes to a vote of the people. Why do we want to hamstring future generations by not fixing things in good times and keep us mired in a bad times mode? Is it because buildings, roads and retirements systems do not vote?
If your company did not give you a pay raise for two years after you were forced into no raise or taking a pay cut would you like to be limited to a 6 percent increase? Would you like to be limited in your ability to fix up your home, put money into your retirement account or do needed remodeling?
Finally, on a personal note, I object to any group paying people $1 per signature to obtain enough signatures to get a proposal on the ballot whether I am for it or against it. I further object to it coming from out of state and not originating with Oklahomans.
While I respect all thoughts on good government, T.A.B.O.R. sounds like I am being sold fool's gold that looks good but ends up costing me. And that's my Ross Roundup.
