Houston sewers, pro-active annexation, & cross subsidies
Topics: Subsidy
25 Jan 1994
From: ervan
I see that Lanier is going to use sewer fees (that come on your
water bill) to pay for city health services. This is the same Lanier
who used metro funds to pay for police. Regardless of how much we
should spend on city health services, paying for it by sewer fees
is dishonest taxation. Let's tax it honestly. For you liberals,
I want to note that taxation via service is a regressive tax. It's
somewhere between a poll (head) tax and a flat tax (since water usage
grows sub-linearly with income).
The obvious response to this is to use your own water and
sewer service to avoid this perverse tax. That's illegal of course.
The city has outlawed any competition with its services. It would not
do to have people bolt when another bad government idea comes along.
The next best thing is to move out of Houston. Though the
frictional cost is high, cities should be able to compete with each
other. If the city of Houston cannot do a competent job of managing
the basic services it has monopolized, then you should at least be
able to move somewhere that can. But, nope, that's illegal too.
Houston has pro-active annexation authority. It can reach out and
forcibly incorporate unincorporated regions regardless of the desires
of the citizens of such an area. Furthermore, incorporation is now
illegal within some large radius (50 miles?) of Houston.
Competition between cities is a viable concept. It should
be allowed to operate. Instead, we have a case of the bad driving
out the good. However screws up and squanders their tax base or
drives away their productive citizens and companies can reach out
and drag down however is doing a good job.
It is not the foremost problem of government, by any stretch
of the imagination, but cross subsidy is a serious problem at all
levels. Once any activity is brought under the government umbrella
it will be used for purposes beyond its reasonable bounds and you
will not be allowed to escape. Denying college loans and drivers'
licenses to people convicted of marijuana possession is the most
odious instance of this in my book. Another bad one is that social
security funds, presumably your retirement, are being used for general
revenue purposes. This makes a mockery of the whole concept
of the government managing your retirement like it promised (okay,
okay, it was a travesty already, but this only aggravates it).
Home