$951K for "green" streetlights in Detroit

[Det_ard]

Bravo, Mikeg.

[3rdDegreeBurns]

Mikeg,

Please do not interpret my comments as a wholesale endorsement of federal policies. I too am troubled that money is disproportionately available for capital investments as opposed to operation and maintenance. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that our country's great infrastructure was built with local taxes! Interstate highways, ports, canals, bridges, these things were all built with State and Federal money/loans. On the city level, I would suppose that much was built with local dollars [[using bonds backed by the state). Of course, then the people who voted for the politicians who made the decisions to spend that money wouldn't allow their taxes to be raised to pay for maintenance. Later they left for greener pastures with lower taxes and less infrastructure to maintain. Most went through the same cycle again, building schools, roads, parks, but not willing to raise their taxes to pay for it. Eventually people left those places too and started the cycle again somewhere else. I don't think that we can pretend that financing infrastructure primarily through local governments and local taxes works. It is too easy for people to demand investment [[backed by bonds) and then later move, leaving that burden for someone else to pay.

I think you have made your position clear that the role of the federal government should not extend into infrastructure projects. I disagree with you, but I can accept your position. Please clarify, does this position extend to schools, fire, police, roads, and planes? What about power generation and transmission? Medicare and Medicaid? I can respect a position that the fed. govt has no role in any of these [[although I disagree) but I have a hard time with people who want to pick and choose the federal support they like and then say the rest is unconstitutional. It's not really a constitutional issue, just a political difference of opinion.

[Meddle]

Over the past decade, the amount of federal dollars going to the states and local governments has increased at a rate 2.3 times the rate of inflation - and they always have numerous strings attached to them. In this case, you can be sure that one of the "strings" attached to the $915k is a prohibition against using any of it for maintenance on existing DPL streetlights and distribution circuits.

I have no idea what you're going on about. Fed$$$ have always been alloted for certain projects. You get X$ to do this, you can't use it for anything else. And if it wasn't for Fed$$$ we wouldn't have streets and highways to drive on or bridges to drive over. Every mile of every public road every where in the country is backed by Fed$$$ to some percentage.

[Melocoton]

And even if they did have enough money to avoid borrowing, why should we have to send money to Washington DC to get streetlights, allowing the federal government to first take a cut of it to run the bureaucracy before sending some of it back to the local governments with strings attached?

Firstly, I don't think it quite works like that. Secondly, I'm mystified about why anyone wouldn't want their federal tax dollars to support projects in their own communities. Would you rather it all get sent to Mitch McConnell's district? Or Oakland County, which happily takes in federal highway funds without Republicans complaining very much? I also can't understand why street-lighting gets singled out for complaints, given how absolutely important it is for safety and quality of life where I live.

Moreover, most people don't care whether it's a local government--which in Detroit and Michigan's case is broke, and therefore unable to fund streetlights--or a federal agency providing the funds to light the streets, so long as the funds get provided. As for your argument about the structural deficiency of the Detroit Public Lighting system, I'd love for some agency to fix the whole damn thing. But as you know, neither the city or the state can or will do that--because once again, the city is BROKE--and if the federal government were to commit the tens of millions [[or more) it would take to really fix the streetlights, the howls of indignation from right-wingers would be off the charts. So what is it that you want? Not in terms of abstract theories, but in concrete terms of whether the lights come on in our streets?

Since the days of the Founding Fathers, there has been continual pressure to expand the role of the federal government by reinterpreting the Constitution.

I don't think the "founding fathers" had anything to say about streetlights.

[Mikeg]

Mikeg, However, don't fool yourself into thinking that our country's great infrastructure was built with local taxes! Interstate highways, ports, canals, bridges, these things were all built with State and Federal money/loans.

I can give you plenty of local examples that disprove your assertion. Not a dime of federal money was used to build the Ambassador Bridge, Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Blue Water Bridge or the Mackinac Bridge, as a matter of fact, the first two were built entirely with private financing. Most of the roadways in this state have been built without federal funds. Prior to the ARRA "Stimulus", the regulated electrical utilities in SE Michigan provided their own financing for capital projects. Only during the past 50 years has the Detroit water and sewer system relied on federal funds for capital improvements...........

On the city level, I would suppose that much was built with local dollars [[using bonds backed by the state). Of course, then the people who voted for the politicians who made the decisions to spend that money wouldn't allow their taxes to be raised to pay for maintenance. Later they left for greener pastures with lower taxes and less infrastructure to maintain. Most went through the same cycle again, building schools, roads, parks, but not willing to raise their taxes to pay for it. Eventually people left those places too and started the cycle again somewhere else. I don't think that we can pretend that financing infrastructure primarily through local governments and local taxes works. It is too easy for people to demand investment [[backed by bonds) and then later move, leaving that burden for someone else to pay.

Where to start? Too many folks take a linear and closed loop view of the demographic changes in SE Michigan over the past 100 years and view the growth of the suburbs as a zero-sum process that occurred solely at the expense of the city of Detroit. Yes, there has there been a significant migration of middle class residents from Detroit to the outlying areas, but over the years Detroit and its outlying areas have also experienced significant migration of people to and from areas outside of SE Michigan. Many of the residents of suburban Detroit are 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation descendants of emigrants and families who have never lived in the city of Detroit.

Did you know that in 1910, 24.1% of the total Wayne, Oakland and Macomb County population lived outside the Detroit city limits? The 1910 population of Detroit was 465,800 and there were an additional 148,000 people living outside the Detroit city limits in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Despite Detroit's outward annexations, that number grew to 500,000 by 1930 [[22.9% of the total population), 653,000 by 1940 [[27.5%) and 1,077,000 by 1950 [[35.7%). This population growth did not come at the expense of the City of Detroit, which also continued to grow during this same time frame. The population growth continued for both areas through the 1950 census. However, by 1930 Detroit's population growth rate had dipped below that of the outlying areas, beginning a trend which continued through the 1950 census, after which Detroit's growth rate went negative.

Conservatively estimated, more than half of the current tri-county population outside the Detroit city limits have never resided in Detroit, nor do they have any ancestors who ever resided in Detroit, and thus your "fled and abandoned" arguments do not apply to the majority of them.

Where is the evidence for your statement that as the outer suburbs grew, their residents were "not willing to raise their taxes to pay for" the building of schools, roads, parks, etc ? I know from experience that about 20 years ago Sterling Heights residents voted for a millage increase that was used to widen the major roads under their city's jurisdiction and the voters in the Utica Community Schools have passed every capital improvement bond proposal put before them over the past 40 years. Perhaps you can cite some contrary examples from elsewhere?

I think you have made your position clear that the role of the federal government should not extend into infrastructure projects...... It's not really a constitutional issue, just a political difference of opinion.

I have no problem with federal spending on state/local infrastructure projects that promote interstate/international commerce and which are funded with Congressional appropriations oversight or distributed by bureaucrats using a legislatively-defined formula. I do have a problem with federal funding of state/local projects using the earmark process or because the project can qualify as a "shovel-ready" project that might somehow stimulate the economy or reduce peak generating loads or some other dubious justification. Grants of million of borrowed federal dollars for nice new streetlight fixtures is the poster child for the latter category regardless of which cities are the recipients.

As I pointed out earlier in this thread, over the past decade, the amount of federal money going to state and local governments has increased at a rate 2.3 times the rate of inflation. Federal money has now become the single-largest source of revenue for state and local governments, surpassing income taxes and property taxes. The federal government is sending them borrowed dollars that are being used to pay for 23% of the state and local government spending in this country [source]. It used to be that state and local governments had to live within their means but now they can keep on spending and let Uncle Sam do the borrowing for them. One shouldn't have to use Constitutionality or political arguments to make the simple economic case that this trend is unsustainable and must be reversed!