| February 12th, 2010 Cutting nonprofits: Gatsas gets it right Almost any action that improves the lives of some individuals can be said to carry some sort of public benefit. However, that doesn't mean it should be publicly funded. In Manchester, Mayor Ted Gatsas is scouring the city budget for nonessential spending that can be cut to help taxpayers better weather the recession. He's moving to nix a lot of funding for nonprofit groups, such as the American Red Cross, the Boys and Girls Club and New Hampshire Legal Assistance. It's about time. There are too many nonprofit groups that do good things to fund them all with taxpayer dollars. What happens is those that have political connections or have missions with which politicians want to identify themselves receive government subsidies while the rest do not. That creates a terrible distortion in the nonprofit marketplace. And it results in the government confiscation of private resources for the primary benefit of politicians who purchase goodwill by giving away other people's money. The city has no business using property taxes to fund nonprofit groups unless those groups are contracted to provide essential public services. Gatsas is absolutely right to start cutting those subsidies. If the mayor succeeds, he will set an example for the governor and the President to follow. Not that they will, but at least city property taxpayers will have a little relief even if everybody else's taxes remain needlessly high. - Printed in the New Hampshire Union Leader, Editorial Page 2/12/10 Back To News |
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Paid for by Ted Gatsas for Mayor. B. Rivard, Fiscal Agent PO Box 6655, Manchester, NH 03108 603.623.0220
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