The Rhino’s John Hammer asks “where else can you cut $13 million from a budget and wind up with a higher budget than the year before?”
Of course the answer is government, in this case Greensboro City Manager Rashad Young’s budget.
Young’s budget notwithstanding, the exchange between council member Robbie Perkins and the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship serves as the perfect illustration of municipal government economics (emphasis mine):
A $75,000 loan from the city had come due and the Nussbaum Center had requested that it be forgiven. Instead the city council rolled it into the $1.2 million loan that it had been ready to approve.
Sam Funchess, the director of the Nussbaum Center, said that having to pay back the $75,000 loan would create a $19,000 budget deficit.
Perkins said, “If you can’t pay a $75,000 loan over 10 years, how are you going to pay $1.2 million over the next 10 years.”
The council approved the loan by a unanimous vote.
And still we keep standing around, scratching our heads.
