Friday, November 21, 2008

Trash Fee Headed to Dumpster

City Manager Milton Dohoney has proposed that next year's Cincinnati city budget include a monthly fee for trash pickup.

Of course, this "fee" is nothing more than an additional tax, as trash pickup is not a new service. Currently it's funded out of the city's generous property and income tax revenues.

We think that Dohoney is putting this up as a means of leveraging City Council into action to make difficult cuts necessary to balance the budget. The chance of anyone on Council being reelected after voting in a regressive $200-per-household-per-year tax for an existing service is below zero. We note that Dohoney himself said today that in all his years of government employment, he's never presented a budget that his boss didn't modify. His boss is Council.

We predict that this tax will not come close to enactment. If it does, we predict a very different City Council after next November.

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