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Showing posts from January, 2009

Defending the public sector

Douglas County has something called the Partnership of Douglas County Governments -- a voluntary association of governmental agencies that meets monthly to share news, and look for ways to save money through cooperation. At our meeting yesterday, I put forth my notion, learned from our failed mill levy election in 2007 and 2008, that all of us in Douglas County need to launch a new kind of communication approach with our citizens. I've been writing about this in my newspaper columns for the past three weeks, and will have more to say in the future. But the idea is this: particularly in this county, there is an almost reflexive description of all government as incompetent, inefficient, borderline evil. Taxation is seen as bad by definition. I'm not claiming that taxation is by definition good, by the way. It depends on the project, the cost, the value -- just like the cost for anything in the private sector. But an attitude, cultivated and promulgated by Baby Boomers, of profoun