Cutting the budget was the easy part

     The easy work is done: The Carroll County Commissioners set out to cut spending enough to cut taxes by two cents and they accomplished that. They passed the budget Tuesday despite the protests of Commissioner Robin Frazier, who said they should have cut the rate five cents.
     Easy. No problem making cuts. All you have to do is tell everyone right up front that it makes no difference what the consequences of those cuts will be, that's the way it is. There will be a two cent cut in the tax rate and everyone will have to live that. No wonder you didn't hear much grumbling; program leaders were probably terrified that they would be slashed more.
     Yes, revenues are down; we dealt with that reality for the past two years. Assessments are leveling off or even falling on real property, income tax revenues are off because people are working less hours -- some aren't working at all -- and there have been no raises in two or more years. Costs have to be contained, and good sense dictates that some cuts are necessary.
     It just seems to me that with all of that being said, why would responsible leaders cut their operating funding even more by starting out with a two cent cut in the tax rate?
     Because they said they would. Campaign promises, and all that. Living up to the uninformed and over-the-top rhetoric and unrealistic expectations of their base constituency. That's pandering, not leadership.
     Leadership would have set the goal at holding the tax rate and cutting spending, but not gutting programs.
     Leadership would have been acknowledging that an increase in tipping fees to trash haulers will, indeed, be passed on to consumers (and there goes the two cent cut in taxes for many people). And why has the local press insisted on repeating the hollow assertions of the commissioners that the hike in trash hauling costs need not be passed along to consumers?  Sounds like spin, to me.
     Commissioner Doug Howard, nearly crowing with pride, is allowed the gratuitous quote that "because of the great communication . . .there wasn't an outcry" when the governing body approved funding cuts.
     "The whole process was better than I anticipated," he chirped.
     Richard Rothschild, another whose pride was obvious with the slash and burn approach to civic programs, including education and human services, drug interventions and other public safety initiatives built on for the past eight years, intoned, "The best thing that a board of commissioners can do is make sure we're not shy about asking the really tough questions."
     Wrong. The best thing that a board of commissioners can do is seriously consider the consequences of its actions. You can debate the issues, carry a strong argument for a point of view, and seek to find compromise before you take actions that adversely affect the lives of people and the programs that have been found worthy for years.
     But when you begin with the outcome determined, it means you don't care about the consequences, and tells people you are not willing to listen.
     Oh, they listened to the people in the streets who elected them. That makes them populists, perhaps. Populists are followers, following public opinion, right or wrong.
     Leaders know they have to listen to those who elected them, and they need to listen, look, and learn more than the public knows -- or wants to know -- about the realities of maintaining, sustaining, and supporting an entire community of disparate and often competing needs and wants.
     The commissioners think they succeeded. In the larger and longer term, they failed their first big test.