It's a public government, not a church or cement plant

        As the Carroll County Commissioners trudge through the budget process, it occurs to me that they have no shared vision.
     Commissioner Robin Frazier apparently wants to use government for missionary work.
     Commissioner David Roush wants to run it like an overgrown chamber of commerce, or a cement plant. What's good for business is all that counts.
     Richard Rothschild seems to want to return to the United States Constitution -- before any of the amendments -- and let those with the means be like Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett, settling little multiple-acre homesteads where you don't have to see the smoke from your neighbor's chimney, and keep the savages at bay.
     Doug Howard came into this thinking it's simple: Run government like a business, with a business plan, profit and loss statement, quarterly reports and balanced budgets and everything will be just fine.
     What he didn't realize -- but seems to be awakening to -- is that unlike any other business, local government's customers are also the owners, and no board of directors on the Big Board has so many different expectations of where the "company" should go from here. Indeed, some want it to go out of business.
     Haven Shoemaker's first goal was to get elected, and then it would be just like being mayor of a town, right?  Wrong. A town needs property taxes for funding general services, and charges water and sewer fees for utilities, but is not expected to provide schools, health services, courts, and a long list of other things that cost a lot of money.
    They had a goal of cutting spending, but that is not a vision. Calling cutting spending in the government context is like saying you're saving the cost of running a cruise ship by shutting down the engines.
     It's right there in the way they are approaching the budget: They can't -- or won't -- look beyond the current year.
     You can run a cement plant that way, if you're the plant manager. You don't need a vision -- a long term plan. Other, higher paid executives up the corporate ladder are in charge of the vision, and they tell you what they want out of the plant this year, and you get it. If that means being ruthless with employees, so be it. It's a business, not a public service.
     But government is a public service.
     People who like to stick to the basics, the fundamentals, the simple plans, don't understand the need for a vision.
     These commissioners don't get why the department of management and budget works nine or 10 months on a six-year plan. They don't seem to see the need to have money planned for four years hence for replacement of aging air conditioning systems, failing plumbing, crumbling parking lots, the normal growth in government spending caused by simple population growth and aging infrastructure.
     In a stunning display of hubris, Rothschild took the budget department's 10 months of work home and "fixed" it over lunch. He may have an agenda, but not a vision for county governance.
     The commissioners need a vision, and only when they have one can they make a plan, and then, only then, will they be prepared to work out a budget not just for this year, but for the next several years.
     And you can't move into the future by putting the engine of government in reverse, or park.