Money's tight for the Lake County Commission. During Tuesday's meeting, our commissioners cut $200,000 from various budget requests. They're still looking at having to draw another $200,000 from cash reserves to pay the bills.
Among items that could provide direct benefit to the community, the commissioners cut one new police car ($25,000) and again put off a storage expansion for Search and Rescue ($50,000). They hacked the poor assistance allocation in half ($30,000). They reduced fundig for rural fire department radios ($4800).
Meanwhile, the county proposes to give the Lake Area Improvement Corporation, which has failed to produce any improvement other than potential improvement, the same chunk of our tax dollars as last year, $25,000. That's still $5000 less than the LAIC requested in a letter that would be hilarious if it weren't so deliberately deceptive.
But that's still $25,000 that would go down the black hole of unproductive LAIC wheel-spinning. $25,000 would do more immediate good for the county invested in a new patrol car. It would do more immediate good helping to build storage space so Search and Rescue could better organize their gear and respond to emergencies faster. It would do more immediate good split 100 ways and handed to 100 indigent families to help them feed their kids. It would do more good buying a few more radios for rural firemen.
Every one of the above expenditures would serve a tangible public good. Handing money to the LAIC simply ensures the continuation of unnecessary and apparently unproductive corporate welfare.
The LAIC handout isn't set in stone yet. The county holds its provisional budget hearings in September. Let's change some commissioners' minds and turn that $25,000 corporate welfare back to real direct public purposes.