Reason Magazine isn't big on DC local governance

All true progressives have some intersection points with libertarians, but we're still different folks. Progressives aren't against government, libertarians are--although even libertarians aren't perfect as they seem to favor certain kinds of government spending (money for roads especially) over other kinds of spending (Smart Growth incentives, transit).

Where I take issue with fellow progressives is making excuses for badly functioning government, which I won't do.

That being said, having lived in the city for 20+ years, having been mugged just like the writer, getting hit by cars on my bike, riding over potholes, riding buses and transit, driving borrowed and/or rental cars, seeing rats, but apparently not nearly as many as Matt Welch, going to DMV but never having to register a car (or get it inspected), I still don't have the same viewpoint as expressed in the June cover story of Reason Magazine, "From the Top: City of Rats."

The subhead of the story is "Thinking big" at the municipal level means abandoning the basics."

I disagree.

But I will aver that there are too few of us demanding excellence. That our chorus is often drowned out. And that rather than being termed mellifluous, our singing is criticized as not being helpful or mean and scratchy.

It's true that cities have declined, that demands have gone up, that resources available to cities have declined as most financial and governmental policies foster suburban and exurban development still, even in the face of exponential rise in gasoline prices.

Cheap gasoline is essential to sprawl, and while that paradigm is changing, maybe (see "Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit," from the New York Times) for the most part cities have serious funding imbalances as they have leaked population and business for 40-50 years, and don't have the ability to tax.

Regarding the ability to tax too often comes the propensity to spend.

And spending has to be judicious, focused on the basics first--safety, rat vectors, public health, roads, transit, schools--before spending too liberally on providing big giveaways to sports teams (only the Wizards basketball team paid for its own arena, although they have since gotten other benefits) and talk about trying to lure the football team Redskins back to the city as well.

Recently I read something that made the point that subsidies to sports teams and high arts really come from the poor and I guess I have to agree. It's the reverse of Robin Hood.

DC is in the fortunate position of having strong revenue streams these days, even though the city faces a budget deficit this year.

The challenge is to utilize these revenues judiciously so that for each dollar spent, more than one dollar is received in return.

I think we have a ways to go.

The city started improving under Mayor Williams, but it is a long time process. It took decades for the city to decline. It will take decades, hopefully accelerated, for the agencies and services to improve, for the quality of city personnel to improve, and for the development of a consensus vision on how to move forward, and then to implement that vision.