City’s policies are the problem

The government credibility gap as depicted by Ron Kaye is well deserved (“Ron Kaye: The government credibility gap,” Oct. 16), but the abuses at the city of Bell were simply the imminent warnings of the canary inside the statewide coal mine.

The poisonous air in that city was no fluke.

Yet there is something astonishingly disappointing about an essay as rich with nuance and balance as this one. To interpret that the city’s management would truly consider the broad public interest above its own is the epitome of that common naiveté.

Considering tax increases without evaluating government productivity has been the norm, though conservative fiscal policies were generally applied in Glendale until about 12 years ago.

If Kaye were to look at just the last 10 years, he will find that as the population decreased, Glendale went on significant hiring, salary and benefit increases that are crushing the city’s finances today.

That fact, more than the state of the economy, is the cause of the city’s “new normal.”

Herbert Molano

Tujunga