December 16, 2008 08:03 PM UTC

El Paso County Bathtub Drowning Update

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday was Budget Day along the Ronald Reagan Highway, as the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

El Paso County commissioners approved a $232.3 million budget for 2009 Monday, holding the line on spending at about the same level as this year by laying off dozens of employees and cutting back office hours and services.

Residents will likely have to wait longer at the motor vehicle department, see animal control services curtailed and be able to do business only four days a week at most county offices.

“The citizens should see us maintain the reduced level of service unless revenue continues to come in at a less rate,” Chairman Dennis Hisey said. If revenues drop, the county will cut further, he said.

“I would caution all department heads and elected officials you may be seeing budget cuts again as early as March,” he said.

The cuts in service are largely the result of dozens of layoffs this year in two waves – last summer to meet budget shortfalls and in November after voters rejected the county’s 1 percent sales tax increase…

Casting the sole dissenting vote on the budget, [El Paso County Commissioner Wayne] Williams called it “financially irresponsible,” because it spends $3 million more than it takes in.

We’ve followed the fiscal crisis in El Paso County irregularly for some time now, since it’s kind of a petri dish for what happens when ideologues bent on destroying government run one without opposition over a period of decades (won’t it be cool when the government goes from being open four days a week to just on Wednesdays? That will be awesome!)

The results are increasingly speaking for themselves: in June, El Paso County was forced to cut its suicide prevention program–even though Colorado Springs has the second highest suicide rate in the nation. There aren’t enough deputies to adequately patrol the county or staff the jail. The county has cut important child protection services, and has even resorted to selling off parkland to raise cash. The health department gave up on complying with the law on restaurant inspections a long time ago.

Meanwhile, beet-red El Paso County soundly rejected a 1% sales tax hike that would have addressed the problem–not completely, but would have given them some space to come into compliance with a slew of legal minimums. It’s not like they would have spent it on “pork,” right? Unless you call making sure the Chinese restaurant on the corner isn’t serving poison chicken “pork.”

That’s the bottom line, and it parallels a problem the ardent, ideological left has: ideology doesn’t tell them when to stop. It doesn’t give them a flag for when they’re done cutting fat and have started to cut bone. And at some point, even the most blindly partisan Briargate dittohead will realize that arguing about “big” or “small” government is meaningless if you don’t have functioning government.