I attended a local government meeting earlier this month in order to keep up with the latest on fracking in our town. Something else interesting happened as well. The meeting began with a budget review. Budget reviews are long and drawn out affairs even when they're not, if you know what I mean. Fifteen minutes of going through line items, projected numbers, shortfalls, and so on can seem very long indeed if you aren't turned on by bookkeeping.
That's a shame, because those kinds of dry, eye glazing exercises are where the real action is at from a policy perspective. As our trustees went through the numbers, one item in particular jumped out at me. That is not because it was the biggest number, but the easiest to understand. The secretary's review included a big, fat zero for funds that had formerly come from the estate tax. It was eliminated entirely for 2010, which had meant less funding for our town.
