Reform needed at every level

I love seeing all these letters calling for reform in our government. We could sure use it, but lets be careful what we wish for.

The way things work now, the folks who are hip deep in the mess are most likely, the ones who helped create the problem. Having them do the reforming is like appointing the fox to design the hen house.

If reform is really in the wind, then it can't be a band-aid kind of "reform" filled with holes large enough to drive a semi through. And it has to include every school district, every board of education, every village and city, township, county and our state government. The reform must also go beyond ethics and must include taxes, fees and spending.

Budgeting is an excellent example. As it is now, each governing body does its budgeting based on the previous year's expenses and how much additional money they will need to sustain the services and perhaps add a new one. There is no incentive for reducing costs and the system is too cumbersome to be efficient. If every entity that depends on taxes went to zero-based budgeting, we would be getting a much bigger bang for our bucks. Instead of just justifying increases in their budgets, managers of every department and function would have to first justify the existence of their department and every dollar. This would provide an excellent environment to find cost savings and efficient allocations of each of our tax dollars.

And who would make the final decisions regarding the final numbers for each department? Certainly not those "foxes". We would have small independent groups of qualified citizens assigned to each taxing body. Groups of people free of politics and outside influences. Advocates for us taxpayers and answerable directly to us taxpayers. Anything less than this would be a giant waste of time and just another exercise designed to give the illusion that something of value was accomplished.

Len Brauer

Palatine