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Show Control Public Expenditures Who Is Responsible? If a property owner, goes to the local store and orders a pair of shoes, some hardware, and groceries, groc-eries, and when the bill 3s made up protests against the total amount, am-ount, what can he do about it? The merchant will probably show that the various items are correctly cor-rectly added and fairly priced, but even then the customer may protest against the total amount, and if he does, he may take any one of several courses. He first will probably look over Ms list oi goods and determine if there are any things which can be left out entirely. If there are any such which when discarded will result in a total which he can afford to pay. he will undoubtedly wield the pruning knife on his list, then pay his bill and go on his v. ay wen satisfied with his purchases. But the problem may not be quite as simple as this. He may learn that after non-essentials . have been discarded the amount of tho bill is still more than he can afford, af-ford, and he may be forced to reduce re-duce his expenditures upon , actual ac-tual necessities. There is much in common ' between be-tween the above illustration and the situation which confronts . the ordinary taxpayer when the. .budgets .bud-gets are being formulated, but there is this essential difference: If the property owner . does ' not buy his goods he does not receive any, and consequently does . not have a bill to pay the store; but if the property owner does nothing noth-ing at all about purchasing bene-lits bene-lits of government, some one. else will do it for him, and he along with other taxpayers will have to pay the bill. In fact, the duly elected officers of the various taxing units are authorized by law to provide for the costs of their particular units of goverenment within certain statutory limitations limita-tions even though the taxpayers who pay the bill do not participate partici-pate in the proceedings when the budgets are formulated. How ca.i these public officials know .what the taxpayers want and what they can afford unless the taxpayjrs discuss their problems frankly with their representative in the legislature, in the county commission, commis-sion, the school board, or the city commission? The budget laws provide practical practi-cal methods which permit the taxpayer tax-payer to take an active part ln determining de-termining the costs of government. govern-ment. The entire program of expenditures ex-penditures for state and local government is designed to permit every taxpayer to participate . in the formulation of these expenditures expendi-tures This carries a heavy responsibility re-sponsibility for the taxpayer. It means that he cannot sit idly by when the budgets are being formulated for-mulated and then secure a reduction reduc-tion in the public expenditures-after expenditures-after the time for the consideration considera-tion of the problem has been passed. pas-sed. It is inconsistent for a taxpayer tax-payer to sleep on his rights during the time when he had an oppor tunity to influence the budgets and later protest against his tax bill. So many people say that it's no use to attend budget hearings, that the officials wouldn't listen to him and if they did, they wouldn't pay any attention to him. But .just the opposite is true. Offic-. ials hear those who complain, protest pro-test and demand, a very minority and never know the desires of the majority because they are not expressed. He is apt to interpret the loud voice of a single individual individ-ual as an expression of the will of the people. In the next article we shall discuss dis-cuss the various budgets and explain ex-plain how they are formulated. |