July 16, 1975

Last Stateroom On The Titanic

Big-city mayors have just spent a week in Boston moaning their sad financial plight, taking cheer only when Senator Teddy Kennedy cantered in to propose a "national bank that will lend them more money."

But what can you expect of a man who can't tell the difference between a paved and dirt road in the dark?

Giving the big cities more credit is like trying to cure a drunk with a case of booze.

No doubt about it, the big cities are in deep trouble.  Frankly, there doesn't appear too much hope in saving them as viable social units.

New York and Detroit are trembling on the edge of bankruptcy, and Cleveland is coming up to the brink fast.

The "Big Apple" as the provincials between the Hudson and East Rivers like to call their city of horrors, came within two hours of collapse last month.  Only early payment of taxes by the big utilities saved New York from disaster for another six months.  By then - Mayor Abraham Beame hopes to have borrowed enough, and raised taxes enough, to keep Big Town pasted together until his term of office is over.

Both New York and Detroit went to the credit well once again about a month ago and sold some municipal bonds with an interest rate of 9.4 percent - and don't forget, this is on top of their tax-free status.

Remember the good old days of just a few years ago when municipals were high priced at 3 and 4 percent?

The 43-year binge of borrowing against future income for today's services is coming to a screeching halt.

The free riders, led by vote-hungry politicians, frantically demand bigger handouts as they see the well running dry.  They all want the last stateroom on the Titanic.

The annual U.S. Conference of Mayors, after due deliberation, agreed that the federal government should bail them out with $12.5 billion a year over the next five years.

President Gerald Ford takes a dim view of the proposal on the basis it would fan the fires of inflation.  I agree with Ford, but oppose the bail-out for an additional reason - I've got troubles and taxes enough in my own small town without sending missionary packages of green backs to the metropolitan sink holes.

The big weapon of city-paid workers is garbage collection.  A strike of only a few days brings big cities to their knees.  The cities can't afford to meet their demands, but they also can't afford to let the trash pile up for a week.

In Los Angles, the sanitation workers make $17,000 a year.  The waiting list for trash pick up jobs is many thousands of names long.  In New York, the whole city work force of 330,000 take an hour off each day between Memorial Day and Labor Day because it's hot.

The leader of New York's biggest municipal union, Vic Gotbaum, admitted recently that "the unions have got to give up some of the crap they got at the bargaining table, they never should have got some of it."

But how does a big city mayor say no to a union?

Only yes men get elected.

The power of big unions - particularly those of the municipal bureaucracy - to control a big city is frightening.

A modern metropolis is a fragile thing that collapses in a matter of days if any municipal service is cut off.  Whether it's garbage pick up, sewage treatment, water supply, police protection or street maintenance - all fails if one fails.

Thus all other residents of a city are at the mercy of the bureaucracy.

And in these days of one-man one-vote democracy big-city control is coming to mean state control.  Inevitably state control will be national control.

I get the willies when I extend the present drift of big city politics to its logical conclusion.

It is a fact that the eight largest cities in the United Sates could run the entire nation - and very nearly have achieved such domination.

Consider for a moment the following table of cities, states and electoral votes:

Inasmuch as it takes 218 votes to elect a president, it can be readily seen that the executive branch of government is subject to frequent capture by big city interests, if not permanent possession.  In fact, this is what has happened in recent history, and it explains why the cities are in so much trouble.  Only on occasional surge of conservative Republican or conservative Democrat sentiment in the legislative branch has so far maintained a semblance of power balance.

With the power to vote in its own political stooges, the big cities have helped them-selves first at the public trough.  With nothing to restrain them, the big city interests have over fed and eaten up the substance of riot only their own community but that of many others in distant places.

One thing for sure: a national bank under political control - read that big city control - committed to free loans to big cities is the last thing we need.

Author: Lindsey Williams