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Show Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune had a story on dividing Utah into five super-counties. super-counties. Dr. G. Etzel Pearcy, of California State Universty, wants to divide the states into supercounties, and he make no bones about it being another layer of government. A supercounty would assume policy decisions, data processing and analysis of it's counties. The argument is that it would avoid duplication and overlapping jurisdictions. Existing counties wouldn't be totally obliterated, ob-literated, but would have greatly reduced authority, and only carry out routine functions. func-tions. County officers would be subordinate subor-dinate to supercounty officers. President Nixon in 1972, set eight regional governments in the country, and in 1971, Gov. Rarnpton combined Utah's 29 counties into seven Assn. of Gov'ts. These supposedly voluntary organizations organiza-tions are not so voluntary. Counties are coericed into compliance, with promises of state and federal funds, if they do, and being cut off from these funds if they don't. Bureaucratic agencies on both state and federal levels ignore, or lose application for funds that are not channeled through these additional layers of government. . Except for a couple of strong willed counties such as Iron and San Juan, counties coun-ties have submitted to this unconstitutional unconstitution-al take over. Iron and San Juan have maintained local control, while losing none of their entitlement or services. Beaver County, and other Utah Coun-' ties have become more, and more, dependent de-pendent upon these state and federal bureaucracies, bureau-cracies, administered through these new levels of government. As makeworkprograms,revenueshar-ing, makeworkprograms,revenueshar-ing, and CETA programs become more and more a part of financing day to day business bus-iness in the counties and cities, it becomes more and more difficult for local public officials to make their own decisions. Decisions De-cisions that affect their constituents. Take for instance Milford City. Their recently passed budget (County News June 9) contained only $103,000 in the general fund. Of this amount $35,500 was property pro-perty taxes, $25,000 sales tax and the rest licenses, fines and fees. The rest of the nearly $300,000 budget comes in the form of special funds of which Milford has 13. There were even more last year and will be more before this year is out. Most of these funds are financed by revenue sharing, special grants, etc. Once the city accepts these funds, they have little lit-tle to say about how they are handled. Each grant carries its own set of regulations, regula-tions, that must be followed to the letter. What's wrong with that you say? Dependency on these special funds for survival. If all these funds were cut off at once it's possible the city could not afford to continue its present level of services. Raising the mill levy to its maximum would raise only another $26,000. Add the water revenue of $70,000 and you still fall short of city expenditures of over $100,000. As cities become more and more dependent de-pendent upon these funds for daily operation, they become more and more the puppets of the bureaucratic dictator. Water rates would have to more than double to pick up the slack. Property taxes would have' to quadruple to cover present expenditures. Why worry about some educator in California with a grand design for super -counties? Let's remember that Nixon created the federal regional governments by executive order. Gov. Rarnpton set up the AOG's by executive order. President Carter has already used the executive order to im -plement the clean air act and certain mining and public land regulations. Don't forget that the "new constitution" constitu-tion" was written by educators such as Dr. Pearcy, financed by government grants and those of private CFR controlled foundations. founda-tions. Supercounties are as close as the next executive order. , Local elected officials are as a rule reluctant to raise taxes or the price of services. After all, they live here, and must pay the same as everyone else. They're not so hesitant to spend state and federal grants. They cant be held accountable for state and federal taxes. These are like gifts from heaven. It's obvious that state and federal budgets bud-gets are out of control. How long can they continue to operate with deficits of $50-100 $50-100 billion dollars a year? What would happen if all loans were called? If every savings bond was redeem -ed, if every budget was balanced, if the national debt was erased, there is not enough gold in Ft. Knox to pay the bill. The United States of America would be bankrupt. There would be no more state or federal fed-eral grants. Every large city, every small municipality, would face bankruptcy 'or at best a sharp curtailmnt of services. In February 1973, we wrote an editorial, "Frogs and Freedom". We warned then that joining the FAOG was a little like cooking a frog. If you toss a frog into boiling water, he'll jump out before he gets burned. But put him in cold water and warm it slowly to boiling, and by the time he realizes what is happening, he's cooked. The federal bureaucracies, regional government and the AOG's are heating the water. Supercounties would just add more fuel to the fire. It's all done under the guise of efficiency. If you want efficiency, any economist will tell you to resort to dictatorship government. gov-ernment. Have we now reached the point where we, have a bureaucratic dictatorship? If not, we are getting close. Will supercounties bring the water to the boiling point, or is there another step? Can we afford to continue to bath in this beautiful warm water, of state and federal grants, or should we jump now and become be-come self-sufficient? We think it's time to jump! "Red" |