Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New
York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities
"squabble over crumbs," as he puts it, while so much local money pours
into the Pentagon's coffers and into America's wars. He's so sick and
tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he's decided to
do something about it. He's planning to be the first mayor in the
United States to decorate the facade of City Hall with a large, digital
"cost of war" counter, funded entirely by private contributions.
That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total
price Binghamton's taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city's "war
tax" will reach $138.6 million -- or even more if, as expected, Congress
passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover
the president's "surge" in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to
put the counter "where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are
urged to have a much-needed conversation."
In doing so, he's joining a growing chorus of mayors, including Chicago's
Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, who are ever more
insistently drawing attention to what Ryan calls the country's "skewed
national priorities," especially the local impact of military and war
spending. With more than three years left in his current term, Ryan has
decided to pull out all the stops to reach his neighbors and
constituents, all 47,000
of them, especially the near quarter of the city's inhabitants who
currently live below the poverty line and the 9% who are officially
unemployed.
A Hard Hit Rust-Belt City
Like so many post-industrial rust-belt communities, Binghamton was
hard hit by the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that
followed, though it faired better than a number of similar cities, in
part because Ryan, his administration, and the Binghamton City Council
are a smart and scrappy crew. No doubt that's why he earned the New York
State Conference of Mayors Public Administration and Management award
two years running.
These days, however, even the smartest and scrappiest of mayors still
has to face grim reality. In July 2009, as the city began developing
the 2010 budget, Ryan projected a $7 million shortfall. Contributing
factors included a likely $700,000 decline in sales tax revenue, ever
rising healthcare costs, increased pension contributions to replace
funds lost in the market during the collapse of 2008-09, and a $500,000
drop in the return on the city's investment portfolio.
With worse times ahead, thanks in part to the projected end of
federal stimulus money and a city drained dry of reserves, Ryan has had
to face a classically unpalatable choice: raise city sales taxes from 7%
to an unheard of 24% or cut city jobs. He chose jobs, as have the vast
majority of mayors and governors across the country, eliminating 39 of
them. In the process, he sought greater program efficiencies and
wrestled with ways to increase city revenues while cutting ever closer
to Binghamton's proverbial bone.
It was in the context of this kind of local pain that Ryan was
stunned to discover just how much of Binghamton's taxes were going to
the military and to our distant wars, and how little was coming back to
Binghamton in the form of aid and services. "When I first saw the cost
of war numbers and made the connections," Ryan remarks, "I had to wonder
if we're ever going to get our priorities straight as a nation. It's
like we're facing an attack on government. As a mayor, I can see so
clearly what increased federal spending could do for the people of my
city."
Ryan's message doesn't resonate with all of his constituents -- some
have walked out on his public appearances -- but he's used to
controversy and convinced that Americans had better get their heads
straight soon. "People are hurting so bad," he insists, "that, like it
or not, we're all going to have to look at things seriously if we want
our situation to change."
Heads should swivel, he thinks, when faced with the $138.6 million
Binghamton's taxpayers are out of pocket since 2001 for the Iraq and
Afghan wars. And that's not even counting the city's share of the
supplemental funds Congress will undoubtedly agree to this spring to
cover the Afghan "surge" or the city's portion of the basic Pentagon
budget for the same period.
For a small city with an annual budget of $81.1 million, $138.6
million would be a hefty sum, even in non-recessionary times. For the
same amount of money, Ryan could fund the Binghamton city library for
the next 60 years, or pay for a four-year education for 95% of the
incoming freshman class at the State University of New York at
Binghamton, or offer four years of quality health coverage for everyone
in Binghamton 19 or younger, or secure renewable electricity for every
home in the city for the next 11 years. If he was feeling really flush,
he could fully fund one-third of New York State's Head Start slots for
one year.
For the same sum, Ryan could also authorize a $2,900 tax refund for
every woman, man, and child in Binghamton or pay the salaries of all of
Binghamton's hard-hit public school teachers and staff for about two
years.
For $138.6 million, Mayor Ryan could hire 2,765 public safety
officers for a year, or simply refund the 12 police positions cut in the
latest budget contraction and guarantee those salaries for the next 230
years. Ridiculous? These days, no one is laughing in Binghamton or
other cities like it.
A Community Starved by War
As tax day looms on April 15th, Ryan increasingly thinks about where
Binghamton's tax dollars will be heading and dreams about a government
system that would have the potential to raise and spend tax revenue in
the service of social benefits like affordable healthcare.
He's disturbed by how Binghamton's tax dollars will be distributed
and what they will -- and won't -- buy for his city. Consider, for
instance, where the 2009 taxes paid by a median income Binghamton
household actually went. That year, such a household's income hovered
around $30,000 annually, while its members paid approximately $738 in
federal income taxes.
According to the tax-day analysis
of the National Priorities Project (NPP), an overwhelming 218 of those
dollars went to pay for military expenditures and interest on
military-related debt (generated, in part, by current war spending). The
next highest amount -- $137 -- went to healthcare, including Medicare,
Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
In 2009, $67, nearly 10 cents on every tax dollar, went to an
aggregated category of spending NPP has titled "government," tripling it
in a single year, largely thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program
(TARP), otherwise known as the bank bailout, whose cost every community
in America has had to shoulder. Fifty-eight dollars (8.5 cents on every
income-tax dollar) went to increased unemployment insurance payments and
job-training initiatives, also a rise from the previous year.
Not
surprisingly, the $15 that went to elementary, secondary, higher, and
vocational education in 2009 represented a drop from 2008, a loss of a
penny on every tax dollar. There's no way, of course, that Mayor Ryan's
dream of free, quality education from kindergarten to college is likely
to happen on but 2% of every individual federal income tax dollar. Nor
will we usher in the green techno-revolution that he and President Obama
both support, by spending 2.5 cents on every dollar for the combined
categories of the environment, energy, and science, and another 1.3
cents of every dollar on transportation.
"It's a double whammy," Ryan says. "We have a revenue problem and a
values and priorities problem in this nation."
Some desperate city leaders have suggested that the Mayor cut
workers' pensions to help close the city's budget gap. Matt Ryan doesn't
see that as a solution to anything. "I have secretaries making $25,000
or $30,000. I'm not about to cut their net, such as it is. We have to
think long haul. We have to look at fundamental changes if we're going
to make it as a country. We should all be talking about this -- all the
time."
A construction crew will soon arrive to install Binghamton's "cost of
war" counter which will overlook the city's busiest intersection and
spur conversation around tax day. During the three minutes local
motorists wait at the nearby traffic light, they can join Mayor Ryan in
waving good-bye to $100. And Binghamton as a whole can grapple with
spending $49,650 in war costs every day of 2010.
