Theft at the Public Till
resources to achieve the results. Environmental regulations are costly. Public water systems alone will be forced to spend $553 billion by the year 2000 to comply with regulations mandated by the 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Federal, state, and local governments in 1987 spent $40 billion for environmental protection, but simply to maintain the 1987 standards will cost $56 billion in the year 2000. The amount climbs to $61 billion if costs for new environmental regulations are figured in. The burden of these rising costs will fall predominantly on local govern- ments, which are expected to pick up 87 percent of the public bill for sewers, drinking water, and waste management in 2000, up from 82 percent in 1987. Meanwhile, the state’s share will remain steady at about 5 percent and the federal government’s environmental public works spending will fall from 13 percent to 8 percent as Washington phases out wastewater treatment facility grants. Larger communities will have little trouble tapping into the bond market to raise their share of the estimated $20 billion in new capital that local governments have to raise annually to pay for environmental proj- ects. Smaller communities with limited resources and less access to capital markets, along with older cities already struggling under significant debt burdens, could have trouble keeping up. It is said that giving money to politicians is a form of democratic partic- ipation. In fact, the rich can participate in this way so much more effectively than the poor that the democratic principle of one person, one vote is se- verely compromised. It is said that money buys only access to the politician’s ear; but even if money does not buy commitment, access should not be allotted according to the depth of one’s pockets. It is said that every group has its pool of money, and hence as they all grease Congress, all Americans are served. But those who cannot grease at all or not as well lose out, and so do long-run public goals that are not underwritten by any particular interest groups. What no one might have expected is that if a locality is to survive, it too must give to politicians -- it too must lobby, and it too must try to influ- ence higher levels of government. Crunched by slow growth in employment and a decade of reductions in federal aid, state and local governments are fortunate to stay just one step
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