Order Reprints

Straight Talk

By James Hettinger
Senior Advisor, Battle Creek Unlimited
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sustainability is an overused and an underappreciated word. As the practice of community and economic development progressed in the last years of the 20th century, I am proud that our organization responded to mounting quality of life concerns by inculcating the principles of diversity and sustainability in our development philosophy. And, we freely admit, we borrowed those principles from the environmental movement.

For us, being sustainable meant that when we took projects to our governance, there would be an analysis that shows, despite the upfront costs of doing the project, there would be a return on investment and that return would eventually override the upfront costs. Upfront costs might include, for example, tax incentives and infrastructure investments. It was our expectation that tax revenues and economic activity thrown off by the project would ultimately strengthen the city’s asset base.

With the surge in “green” technology and “green” agendas, we hear more and more politicians, particularly at the local level, slobber over sustainability. Unfortunately, their limited capabilities militate against their realization of a larger vision of sustainability. While President Obama is at a level where he, at least, extends the use of the word “sustainable” to other than environmental issues, he has yet to convert rhetoric into policy.

For too many politicians, sustainability is exclusively imprisoned within the “green” agenda. In fact, federal, state and local leaders would do well to extend sustainability to other matters such as taxation and public finance.

Are the current cost structures of federal, state and local governments sustainable? Do they eat up more resources than they produce? Are we using future resources to pay for today’s governmental policies of public sector engorgement?

If we look at the tax bases of Michigan cities and state government, can we call them sustainable? With a possible budget deficit of $1.7 billion staring us in the face, something is out of step. We have this much coming in and we have that much going out. As we get closer and closer to the day of reckoning, all of our sustainability advocates have taken to hiding under the bed somewhere.

Put another way, with a debt to gross domestic product ratio of 113 percent, the nation of Greece has become a global poster child for the lack of sustainability. Which nation is next? And how far away are we from a similar meltdown?

The next big bailout and the next big raid on our grandchildren’s piggy banks will come as the states have to come up with approximately $1 trillion to correct under and unfunded state pensions. Since the asset bases of the states are inadequate to feed these voracious monsters, how will these generous benefits be sustained?

Sustainability teaches discipline in our use of resources, be they natural or otherwise. It is a great failing of so-called leadership at all levels that there is no discipline or courage to restrict resource outputs to a level equal to inputs. If the world practiced sustainability in the environment the way our politicians do matters of taxation and public finance, there would not be a tree left on earth, let alone a whole rain forest.

Perhaps citizens have been conditioned to believe sustainability should only be an environmental concern. But as their tax bills climb, they will need to demand that such principles be extended to govern the fiscal affairs of federal, state, and local governments.

While it may be fashionable to vilify the Tea Party movement and to mock the participants, they may be the only grassroots movement in the United States that might understand, at least instinctively, the need for sustainability in taxation and public finance. They may have yet to enunciate it that way, but they are concerned that their children’s and grandchildren’s resources are being used today in a society headed toward cradle to grave care.

The welfare state or the status quo, as we know it, is not sustainable. Sustainability is good.

  Order Reprints

TAGS:

• bcu
• column
• economic development
• james hettinger
• straight talk