Keep your light rail to yourself, Kansas City
If you want an example of the problems with democracy, you should read about Kansas City’s affair with light rail. For the past ten years, there has been multiple ballot proposals for increased taxes for light rail or public transit in general. It’s hard to find the exact ballot proposals and their dates, but the votes went something like this:
1998: No
1999: No
2000: No
2002: No
2003: No
If their goal was to poll Kansas City’s opinion on the idea of light rail, they would have had their answer. Obviously, that wasn’t their goal. After each one was voted down, proponents just gathered the signatures they needed to get another measure on a future ballot. They wanted Kansas City to vote in the proposal, and in 2006 they finally got their wish.
2006: Yes (53% to 47%)
With a tiny majority of voters who bothered to vote in that election, they finally had what they needed. They declared that the public had finally spoken, and they wanted light rail!
But what about all of the past elections where it was voted down? That’s the past!
But what about what they want today? Should we continue to vote on this as we have in the past? No, the public has spoken!
But what about the rights of those citizens that might not want to pay for a light rail system? Tough, the public has voted!
This is what happens when individual rights are put up for vote. Rather than persuade you to voluntarily contribute to something, people can go to your neighbors and try to convince them for your help. And in the same way that proponents for things like these don’t care for your opinion, they don’t really care for the opinion of others, either. They want light rail, not your opinion. So long as they get 51% or more at one point in time, and they suddenly have the mandate to use the government’s power to do what they want — no matter what it costs or who has to pay.
The solution is to recognize the government’s proper role: the protection of the individual’s right to his or her life, liberty, and property. Everything the government does should fall within that scope. And obviously, building a train for John and Jane Doe to take to work is not valid.
Anyway, here’s the reason I had to explain the situation. While listening to the radio on the way to work one morning last week, I happened to catch an interview with Kansas City’s mayor, Mark Funkhouser. He was questioned about getting neighboring cities and counties to pay for some of Kansas City’s things, and he said that people need to recognize that many of the things in Kansas City were “regional” assets that everybody in the area should all pay for. And since the average wage in Kansas City is $30,000 less than the average wage in neighboring Johnson County (where I live), it’s time Kansas City’s neighbors paid their share.
It’s bad enough that Kansas City chooses to waste their money and time on things like light rail. Now they want to tax non-Kansas City residents for their decisions, too!
Funkhouser held a mayoral “summit” with the mayors of neighboring towns last week, and I was afraid that it would be the first step towards a tax on me, an Olathe resident, for Kansas City. So, when I read the news on Monday, I was happy to hear that the mayors of Johnson County cities, including my mayor, did not attend the meeting. And I love one of the responses I read here:
“I’ve got a real job I’ve got to do,” Olathe Mayor Mike Copeland told Prime Buzz this morning. “I’m not a full-time mayor like (Funkhouser) is. At $700 a month, you’ve got to have another job that pays the bills.
Said Lenexa Mayor Mike Boehm, a banker by trade: “It’s on a work day and I’m busy.”
Nobody has the right to tell me how to spend the money I earn. And that goes double for governments of areas where I don’t live. Keep your hands to yourself, Kansas City.
And as a side-note: I like the idea of elected political positions being part-time positions. If the government’s role in our lives is reduced to just protecting our individual rights, I think that politicians would have much more free time on their hands. Probably enough time to do something productive. 
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