The EPA, rightly in my view, understands that storm water runoff is one of the major problems facing our waterways. But that’s about where their “rightness” ends. They’ve imposed yet another unfunded mandate, this time on states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Read this piece to see how it all shakes out.
state lawmakers exempted government-owned property from the rain tax but imposed it on religions and nonprofits (which own big roofs and parking lots)
So the rain tax is going to hit homeowners, churches and businesses but not of course the wonderful governments and their schools. Because, heck, resources are precious for them but not for us. This is the stuff that pitchforks are made of. This does not, by the way, mean to suggest that a tax on runoff is a reasonable policy choice.
In other pitchfork worthy news, DC joins the list of “states” claiming that smoking is a pre-existing condition. It’s the National Review, so you are allowed to ignore it of course. We’re doomed. Whatever you think of ObamaCare and the politics of the National Review, you are well served to understand, and understand well, Williamson’s point about unelected bureaucracies and accountability in democracy.
The Gazette says, “Sorry, that article is no longer available.” Maybe somebody got to them.
In any event, the push to spend money on drains, whether they are good or not, continues apace. The idea is that the more broken windows we can find, the better off we will be to cut a government pay check, fully loaded with another forty five percent to repair the windows damaged by the Unicorns.
And the effort to get the stupid farmers living in the Susquehanna Valley has been around for years, for non-point pollution. The idea here is that they pour bags of 20-20-10 on the stream banks, which their cows carry into the creek, so we had better get them to pay for this, by taking their land and whatever they have left, out of fairness.
I think in the backs of their minds they fear the pitchforks. I have one in my garage.
Ignoring the value of having a tax on runoff, if there is to be one, what would be the point of the government taxing themselves?
To alter incentives, at the margin, for good behavior.
But is that small incentive (they could already charge rent if they wanted) worth the cost of permanently hiring more government workers to run the government runoff tax on government buildings?
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