February 27, 2010 02:31 AM UTC

Springs Budget Cuts Make CNN's "Broken Government"

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• by: Colorado Pols

A lesson to others, Colorado Springs’ self-inflicted fiscal follies on CNN:

If you come to a neighborhood park in Colorado Springs, plan on bringing your own trash bags.

To save money, the city has removed the trash cans.

Need to catch a bus? Don’t try on evenings or weekends. The city has cut that service, too.

And when the sun goes down, Colorado Springs is going to look a little bit dimmer. City crews are removing every third streetlight to save money on electricity and light bulbs…

“We put it on the ballot last fall, and they said ‘no,’ ” said Paige, a Republican. “They declined to write the city a blank check, and they said, ‘City, tighten your belts. We’re tightening ours. You need to do the same.’

“We’re going to respect that,” he added. “I’m not going to cry about that.”

It’s not a new concept in Colorado Springs, touted on some Web sites as a “libertarian paradise.”…

“The model of governments, from the federal government down to municipal governments, don’t work anymore,” according to Chuck Fowler, chairman of City Committee, an alliance of local businesspeople set up by Paige.

“They don’t take in as much money. They can’t possibly provide the same amount of services, pay their employees, pay their pensions. Something’s got to give.”

Fowler believes that the solution may be in weaning people off of government services.

“The larger the government is, the more conditioning with certain people that they don’t need to take personal responsibility of their life,” he said.

Got that? So next time you get food poisoning from a restaurant in El Paso County where they can’t fund the Health Department, or call 911 and the cops take an hour to get to you, or break your steering column on a pothole that’s been menacing Academy Boulevard traffic for six months now–remember, the problem is your lack of personal responsibility.

Or maybe Chuck Fowler’s–and thousands of ideologically ‘small government’ voters in Colorado Springs–lack of civic responsibility is the problem, but that’s the thrill of “drowning government in a bathtub,” isn’t it? Everybody votes down their shared responsibilities together, so no one feels personally guilty when they start turning off the streetlights.