RALEIGH – Is dredging the shallow inlets of North Carolina more important that defending the country against Islamofascist terrorism, promoting economic growth, or reforming Social Security?
That’s one of the questions relevant to a about the prospect that federal budget policy might affect the funding stream for the regular dredging of seven shallow inlets along the state’s coast. The New Bern Sun Journal reported that federal funding had previously approximated $800,000 to $1 million per inlet per year, but the current federal budget had allocated only about a quarter of that amount.
State officials aren’t sure if the policy will be repeated, and may seek to replace any lost federal funding with state taxpayer dollars. “We need to find out if the federal administration is going to stick to its policy,” the director of the state’s Division of Water Resources told the Sun Journal. More pointedly, he added, “I think we’re not quite at the point where everybody is convinced that the federal government is going to completely drop the ball here.”
I’d rather public-spirited members of Congress and the Bush administration deliberately deflect any such “ball” heaved in their direction, but I’d take whatever analogy I can get if it means straightening out the responsibility of paying for dredging coastal inlets. Nor would it be much better if taxpayers from Asheville were coerced to fund the project rather than taxpayers from Ashville, Alabama or Ashville, Ohio.
The traditional test for whether a service is a public good, and thus potentially the proper responsibility of government to finance or provide, is not whether it is valuable or popular. Rather, it has to do with whether the beneficiaries of the service are clearly identifiable and can be charged, directly or indirectly, for its use. In the case of dredged inlets, the beneficiaries aren’t hard to discern. They are the operators and passengers of the ships and boats that traverse them, and the customers of the goods that might be transported as a result. Either way, by using docking fees, fishing permits, memberships, or other devices, users can be directly or (through higher prices) indirectly charged.
Don’t get trapped into making the perfect the enemy of the good. Pricing mechanisms don’t have to be flawless to be worth using. The point is that general taxes shouldn’t be used for such purposes, because they serve to distort the relative pricing of transportation alternatives and force people who have no connection to or significant benefit from the service in question to pay for it just as direct beneficiaries do. That’s inefficient and unfair.
As to my original question, we should demand that our representatives in Washington – whether they come from North Carolina or not – to get their priorities clearly and firmly in order. We have a federal government primarily to defend the country from external and internal enemies. And because of recent events, recessionary and otherwise, we have a federal budget gap that if left unfilled may tempt lawmakers to impose a costly tax increase. Fulfilling these responsibilities – while also providing transitional funding for a shift of some Social Security money into individual private accounts – are high priorities for using federal funds.
Subsidizing local functions such as dredging inlets is not a high priority. Adjust accordingly.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.