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A Modest Libertarian Approach to Reducing The Size of Local Government
By Walt Thiessen
April 6, 2005
One of the biggest difficulties faced by Libertarians who run for local office is figuring out how to apply libertarian principles to local government. With so many local services that are considered “essential” by most voters, it’s hard to identify ways to reduce the cost without making voters fear that they’ll get poorer police protection or lower quality schools.
That’s why I’ve come up with CASI, an acronym that stands for Category Assessed Services Invoice. Once I explain it to you, I think you’ll understand that CASI is a simple tool that provides the wedge we need to break the local government monolith wide open.
If your local government is like most, you receive some sort of tax bill every year. This presumably represents your share of the cost of local governance. Under the CASI system, your yearly tax bill would include a cost breakdown by category that would look something like this:
CASI Estimated Cost For Your Family
| Category | Cost |
| Police | $250 |
| Fire | $150 |
| Education | |
| per student, $5,000 | |
| total for family, 3 students | $15,000 |
| Water Treatment | $100 |
| Local Government Payroll | $2,000 |
| All Other Programs | $2,000 |
| Total | $19,500 |
| Your Tax Bill for Fiscal Year 2005 | |
| Real estate | $2,500 |
| Automobile(s) / Personal property | $500 |
| Total | $3,000 |
| Your
Family's Share of the Cost of Local Governance Has Been Subsidized By $16,500 |
|
Obviously, I have invented the above figures for the purpose of illustration. Ideally, this should be summarized into no more than five to ten categories, to keep the taxpayer's CASI report as simple as possible. The estimated cost for each category would be defined as the total budget for the category divided by number of taxpayers, except for School costs, which would be calculated as the total budget for Education divided by the total number of students in public school, then multiplied by the number of public school students in the household.
So why would Libertarians want to promote CASI? There are a lot of very good reasons:
- Taxpayers without children, in most cases, will find that they're paying higher taxes than what they're consuming in services, and for the first time they'll know by how much they're being overcharged.
- Local businesses will find that their tax load is incredibly higher than what they're consuming in local services...in some cases by far more than what they previously realized.
- Families with multiple children in public schools will discover that they're not really paying their own way as much as they previously thought they were doing.
- Libertarian candidates for local office would be able to push for measures whereby taxpayers pay their taxes based on services consumed and not just based on "need." This would completely turn the typical local government budgetary debate on its head. Now that taxpayers would be able to see, right on their tax bills, what exactly they're paying for and not just how much they're being charged, they'd be more motivated to vote in line with Libertarian proposals and ideologies.
- Contrary to our usual approach, instead of just crying for less taxes and smaller, our candidates would be positioning themselves as concerned citizens calling for more complete accounting to the taxpayer by local government, as well as for a system where people pay only for services they use and where they aren't forced to subsidize their neighbors' service consumption.
There are many ways I can imagine that Libertarians could frame their campaigns in local government races in a wide variety of ways using a CASI-based approach. All taxpayers who are subsidizing their fellow taxpayers (primarily childless adults and businesses) will be much more inclined to support Libertarian office-seekers, who in turn will be more likely to target these particular taxpayers. Families with multiple children may be a bit more likely to be frugal when it comes to voting on such things as education budgets, now that the entire community knows just how much they are being subsidized by their fellow taxpayers. The wealthier the family, the more effective the "guilt trip" would be.
I can imagine a Libertarian candidate making up and distributing flyers and posters that show two pictures side-by-side. The left-hand picture shows a family with four kids standing in front of their large $500,000 trophy home. The right-hand picture shows a childless couple standing in front of their much smaller $250,000 home. The caption reads something like, "Why is the less wealthy family on the right being forced to subsidize the local taxes of the more wealthy family on the left?"
Obviously, the CASI approach doesn't resolve all local issues, but it does bring the proper issues to the forefront where they should be. It's a reasonable first step that redefines the entire debate in numerous ways that are favorable to Libertarian candidates, and it takes the pressure off Libertarian candidates by making them appear to be more concerned with government accountability to local taxpayers and therefore much less vulnerable to partisan attacks on their other Libertarian positions. This makes it more reasonable for Libertarian candidates to expect they can start winning local elections on a much more frequent basis than they already have.
In my opinion, ultimately the Libertarian position on local government services should be that you pay for what you use. If you use a local government service, you should have to pay for it (preferably at full price). If you don't use that service, you shouldn't have to help pay for someone else to use it. We must make it clear just how much taxpayers are being forced to subsidize each other's use of government services, and that not all consumers use government services in equal amounts. Therefore, local budgets and taxation policies should be more reflective of actual consumption of these services.
In other words, taxpayers should get what they pay for and only pay for what they get.
Of course, we won't be able to achieve this ultimate goal right away, but just the act of making it clear to taxpayers whether they are being overtaxed or undertaxed compared to services they consume should help redefine local debate in a manner favorable to Libertarians.