Gramm-Rudman Will Pick Local Pockets

The Gramm-Rudman federal budget-balancing law is masquerading as a plan that will reduce the federal deficit in order to save the family budget.

Yet the hard reality is that the ripple effect of Gramm-Rudman is threatening to become a veritable tidal wave that will drown vital local services. Rather than saving the family budget, local taxpayers may find that Gramm-Rudman is pinching them even more. This is because as severe cutbacks at the federal level start to affect locally run programs, we will have to decide whether to drop a program or somehow find local dollars to support it.

We often don’t think of the effect that the federal government has on the well-being of our city. But, from programs for the mentally retarded to the control of Los Angeles’ sewage or the building of Metro Rail, the federal presence is omnipotent.

Last month, at a hearing held by two City Council committees, representatives of federally funded agencies eloquently testified on the effect of the impending budget cuts on their programs.

Individual speakers moved the audience to tears as they described the potential cuts and how their lives would be affected. The mother of a retarded child told of the benefits that her child receives by participating in a program tailored to her special needs. The child would be devastated by the program’s demise, facing isolation from her friends and withdrawal from a positive learning environment. Crying, the mother told how she might have to give up her job and go on welfare if she has to stay home to look after her child. An older man whose wife is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease described the benefits of the alternative care program offered at the local senior multipurpose center. It provides respite for his wife and some relief for him from the full-time responsibility of caring for her.

We learned how cost-effective these programs are and how eliminating or reducing them would increase the actual dollar costs to local taxpayers, to say nothing of the human costs in unfulfilled lives. Can we afford to pay such a high price? What will we really have gained?

Yet it is important to realize that the Gramm-Rudman measure will cut notonly into social programs but also into major brick-and-mortar projects thathave until now been financed in part by federal funds. Often these programs have been mandated by the federal government.

Take the Los Angeles city sewer system as an example.

In order to clean up Santa Monica Bay, the city is under orders to provide full secondary treatment of sewage at the Hyperion treatment plant. It is estimated that the cost of such treatment will run into several hundred million dollars.

In the past, improvements at Hyperion were financed with the aid of wastewater treatment construction grant funds--in other words, substantial help from Washington so that we could meet the standards established by the federal government and ease the burden on local taxpayers.

It is highly unlikely that this source of funding will survive the Gramm-Rudman budget ax, and the city, through its taxpayers, will have to come up with the money. Almost all of the financing alternatives are sure to take more money from the family budget. Any increase in the sewer service charge will hit hardest at seniors and others on fixed incomes, and at those on the poverty line.

A second example is mass transit, specifically the proposed Metro Rail project.

As Los Angeles approaches the 21st Century, it is clear that without some type of mass-transit system our world-class city will lose much of its luster to residents and tourists alike who will suffocate in the congestion and fumes from vehicles on our overcrowded freeways.

Having long ago recognized the importance of having a well-developed and well-maintained system of roads, the federal government has regularly earmarked funds for that purpose. Public transportation within our cities is also an urgent need, and it has long been established policy that federal funds be used on a matching basis with local revenues to design, construct and operate new rail systems.

If transit construction and operating funds are eliminated, the big losers will be our local citizens--those who ride transit, those who employ transit-dependent workers and those who sit in terminal gridlock because of a lack of transit options.

San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, president of the National League of Cities, suggests that we send a message to our representatives in Washington: “A national policy that disdains the partnership of local government, or disregards the needs of cities, has no place in a nation that is of, by and for the people.”

Unquestionably, a $2-trillion national debt must be reduced. The budget balancers in Washington are up against hard choices. They will have to decided whether to finance an MX missile or the smaller Midgetman, or whether a B-1 bomber is a better deal than the “stealth” bomber.

For us in local government, we cannot choose whether to provide police protection or fire protection. It is our duty to provide both.