A litany of wrongheaded public decisions

By Dr. James “Jim” Kadlecek

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” – old-fashioned proverb

This saying means you cannot make a good, quality product using poor materials. To make chairs that’ll last, you need good, strong pieces of wood. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

The same logic applies to public policies. If a concept is, at its core, wrongheaded, it doesn’t much matter what politicians try to do to amend it, disguise it, rationalize it or explain it. It is still bad public policy.

For example, U.S. involvement in Vietnam was clearly a mistake. Even the most ardent defenders of that failed policy now mostly agree with that assessment. Some 58,000 Americans died and 304,000 were wounded. It cost $140 billion. And for what? Political leaders at the time tried to rationalize, to explain away our involvement. They tried different military strategies and employed the latest weaponry. None of that changed the fact that it was a wrongheaded decision to be there in the first place.

Most Americans have now reached the same conclusion about our involvement in Iraq. Nearly 4,000 Americans have died, 28,400 have been wounded and the cost is more than $450 billion. And for what? President Bush has used the arguments of patriotism, spreading democracy, fighting terrorism, getting rid of a dictator, etc. Yet the emerging reality, now accepted by two-thirds of Americans, is that it was a wrongheaded decision to go there in the first place.

There are a number of public policy decisions that seem to me to qualify for the “sow’s-ear” label. One example is our outdated and illogical policy of not accepting Cuba as a country with whom we should have normal diplomatic relations. Another is our continuing stubbornness to decriminalize, and possibly legalize, the use of marijuana, when the vast majority – 78 percent – favor its use for medical purposes and over half the population favors decriminalization.

Then there’s the notion, promoted by Bush and other so-called conservatives, that cutting taxes on the wealthy somehow promotes economic growth. Talk about “snake-oil” logic!

Yet another is our clinging to the private-sector model for health care. Nearly every other developed country in the world has adopted some form of publicly funded universal health care. Most countries have realized how important it is to have a healthy citizenry and workforce. But not the United States.

Local wrongheaded decisions

Bringing the focus locally, I would submit that the sale of Memorial Medical Center several years ago will turn out to be a huge policy blunder. At the time, local politicians saw that our publicly owned hospital was having some financial problems. They used that as an excuse for doing what they wanted to do anyway – selling it and pocketing the money.

Our local hospital served the 40 percent of the population that does not have health insurance. The private sector purchasers of the hospital agreed to care for the uninsured and the proceeds from the sale provided three-year funding for them to do so. Now that those funds are drying up, I believe you will start to see the results of this horrendous and uncaring policy blunder. Among the results I predict will be longer lines at the emergency room, the hospital finding excuses not to care for indigent patients and people’s lives being put at risk.

This will create a health-care crisis for the working, poor families of this county. Eventually, it will become evident that a major error was made by city and county elected officials. The only thing that might bail us out is if universal health care is finally adopted in the United States.

The current proposal to create Santa Teresa tax increment development districts, which I have written about before, is an example of a “sow’s ear.” The bottom line is a multi-million dollar tax giveaway to a wealthy company for a subdivision project that in time would happen anyway. Some commissioners and citizens are trying to make improvements to the deal, but no matter how you dress up this pig, it’s still going to be an animal that eats up tax dollars.

If the county approves it, future commissions will be faced with providing the same subsidies to other subdivision developers, and the result will be a county treasury that will be unable to pay for the necessary public safety and other services that county residents require.

I cannot help noting that the current county manager, Brian Haines, played a major role in engineering both of these bad deals. Both benefit a chosen few at the expense of the many.

Not all bad

Having said all that negative stuff about wrongheaded policy decisions, let me at least end this little piece by praising public officials for also making many right-headed decisions. As citizens, we take for granted all the good things that government does for us each day, from the time we get up each morning and avail ourselves of public water and sanitation services, to traveling the public roads to work, to sending our kids to the public schools and colleges, to providing some protection to our elderly residents with Social security and Medicare. There is a whole long list of good things that government does for us. Thanks for that.

Kadlecek has lived in Doña Ana County since 1996, served in the Colorado Legislature and holds a doctorate in public administration. He’s the author of the book “Capitol Rape.” His column runs on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month and other times that he gets fired up about something.