The government's role

The lesser, the besser.

‘By government are you referring to the network of frum institutions that dominate communal life, or the clowns in the city halls and capitol buildings?’

It is those clowns who fund the frum institutions with tax money from non-Jews.

@akuperma

as one of the few (if not only) members of the YW Coffee Room who actually holds an elected office in a Town Hall I resent being called a clown.

I and my fellow legislative body members deal with the budget,taxes laws/rules and regulations that provide Police, Fire, EMS, school buses, pave and plow the roads, library, public parks, pools, etc.

And not a single member of this body gets a cent for our many hours of service nor do we get reimbursement for expenses.

Working to make our communities better and safer places to raise our families does not make us clowns

CTL, you are, in fact, supporting the conservative view that services (those that should not be privatized) should be as local as possible. As for not being paid, one can also say that it creates conflicts of interest as officials must have business interests in order to live.

@Avi K

Please don’t put words in my mouth or decide that I am supporting a particular view.

I am elected in local government, This doesn’t mean that I believe services should be as local as possible.

I speak to CT. A small state composed of only 169 municipalities. We did away with County Government back about 50 years ago.

I am in the forefront in the call for regional government and services. We don’t need 150+ Chiefs of Police (some towns don’t have their own police but a resident state trooper), we don’t need 150+ Fire Chiefs and Fire Marshals. We don’t need independent Health Departments and Boards of Education in every little town. We already have a few regional school systems and more are in order to save millions of tax dollars. What I’d really like is for one statewide Board of Education to exist with uniform pay for employees, and equal spending on students…no more individual fiefdoms. Our Town hosts the regional waste treatment and transfer station for 3 towns..no need for duplicative facilities.

As for your comment about not being paid and conflicts of interest. No elected official in our town may do business with the town, nor may an immediate family member or the official have a management position of ownership position in a company doing business with or lobbying the town.

Towns of less than 50,000 population could ill afford to pay what amounts to a living to 20+ members of their legislative body. In fact our town has only 4 paid elected officials, two full time and two part time.

Joseph, that’s a specious argument. Donald Trump makes a lot more money than I do, but he probably pays less in taxes. As Leona Helmsley said, “Only little people pay taxes.”

@akuperma

Note that the Jewish Communities in the US running schools and libraries are often doing it using Tax dollars and public services. I can’t guaranty that they are run more cheaply than local government run libraries and schools and they certainly don’t offer the same products/services/technology.

Our town provides the school bus transportation for students in religious day schools. We provide the Special Education and Physical Education for them as well. We even pay for and provide textbooks for secular subjects. We clean the snow from their sidewalks in winter, we provide fire and police service. Our health department provides the school nurses and does immunizations and eye screenings…all at no charge to the Jewish community.

AND>>>before you say the Jewish community members are paying taxes and not using the public schools. That doesn’t hold OOT. Jewish Day and other Parochial schools are regional. The local day school draws 80% of its students from outside the municipality who foots these expenses from local property tax. There is no ‘school tax’ in Connecticut.

CTL, you praised local officials as being efficient and dedicated.(after full disclosure on your negia). In my experience on both sides of the desk the inefficiency and laziness that sometimes crosses the line of robbery of bureaucrats is inversely proportional to the level of government from local to national.Moreover, contrary to what you claim, even without these problems a central government cannot give the individual solutions that are necessary but play to the lowest common denominator.

Perhaps because of this Rambam only enumerates four jobs for the central government: national security, fighting crime, upholding Torah and meting out justice (although each province and locality also had its own system of battei din, as Rambam himself discusses at the beginning Hilchot Sanhedrin). Tzedaka is given over to local communities (and, in fact, Rav Cherlow wrote in the name of Rav Kook that this is because of the inability of a central government’s clerks to give each individual an appropriate solution).

“Jewish communities run schools and libraries, and provide welfare services including emergency health service – all more effectively and cheaply than the government”

That is not true. What Jewish libraries are there? Jewish welfare agencies get their funding from the government. And yeshivot with good special education cost a lot more than the per pupil expenditures at good public high schools.

Charlie,

What Jewish libraries are there? If you would live in a Jewish area, you would know. There are many.

Jewish welfare agencies that get government funding, provide help on a non sectarian basis. (perhaps yours don’t, but the many I’ve dealt with do. No not as a consumer for you and ZD).

The same for your lie that it costs more to provide special education in Jeeish settings than it costs the public schools. It is a gross lie. Your claim is Horse feathers.

CTL, non-residents in general receive police and fire protection. Should there be a unified world police force to spread the cost “equitably”. Does it matter that non-residents spend money in the town (if your town is like my settlement the kids buy in the local mini-market during breaks). The fact of the matter is that central bureaucracies are more inefficient and less responsive to the citizens’ needs than local officials. I recommend the article “The Secret of Swiss Success Is Decentralization” at fee.org (I would type a link but I still do not know if the policy has been completely or only partially changed).

CTL,

1. Are they schools or prisons?

2. My experience with central government workers is that they do not care about anything. They just want to collect salaries for a minimal effort. Of course, one can also say that they give equally bad service regardless of political affiliation. When people know you it is hard for them to be unresponsive. Conversely, if someone is a problem neighbor it is easier to deal with him as he wants them to remain responsive to him. In fact, one double settlement (there were two founding groups, one baalei-batish and one yeshivish so they made two separate settlements one right next to the other) united so that it could become a town and run its own municipal affairs.

3. You are assuming that there should be state-allocated franchises. I am in favor of free enterprise.

Avi K

They are schools. Campuses are closed for security reasons. Need I remind readers of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre 2 1/2 years ago…only twenty minutes from me and we knew some of the families who lost children.

Utilities, and Cable TV/Internet/phone providers are utilities cannot be free enterprise. The cost to build is so expensive that unless awarded a franchise none would exist. I spent 12 years as a Cable TV Commissioner in Ct and am very familiar with the industry.

I’m old enough to remember when the CT state legislature only met every other year and passed two year budgets.