Clipping offers fiscal lesson for City of Ironton

Published 12:00 am Monday, June 14, 2004

Late last week, a friend dropped by the office to talk briefly about Ironton and the current inner workings of the city.

In his hand, was a clipping from The Cincinnati Enquirer.

"I wanted you to read this," the gentleman said, thrusting the carefully folded clipping toward me. "We aren't the only city that's having financial trouble."

The editorial the man brought to my attention focused on Cincinnati's budget woes.

"City officials in recent years were able to mask that they were overspending by accounting tricks, year-to-year carryover and a one-time $54 million windfall from health insurer Anthem's conversion to a for-profit company," the editorial reads.

Sound familiar?

Lop off a few zeros on the bottom line and this could be Ironton.

To my knowledge, neither I nor the man who clipped out the article has any political agenda other than seeing what's best for Ironton and its people.

The Enquirer's editorial delved into several issues, some of which simply do not apply to Ironton's situation.

One issue, however, made me stop in mid-sentence and think to myself, "Now why haven't we done that?"

That head-slapping revelation was over a complicated sounding phrase with a relatively simple meaning: managed competition.

Apparently, Cincinnati has tried it tentatively to much success, as have other cities.

Down the river in Cincy, the first test was in street sweeping, according to the editorial.

Essentially, the practice allows private companies to compete with city workers to bid against each other to perform city services.

It's a pretty novel conception, OK, not really. Competition is what drives capitalism. Such competition is what causes Ironton to be developed in the first place. Without the competitive lure of capitalism would John Campbell and other early ironmasters been able to build Ironton into world renown?

What's novel about the concept is that by bringing competition into government services, our tax dollars will be handled in a more businesslike manner than ever before.

In Cincinnati's test case, again according to the editorial, the city expected to save as much as $900,000 over five years, in addition to having a higher quality of service. In addition, the editorial continued, crews swept more than 4,000 miles more in the first quarter of 2004 than in the first quarter of 2003.

Critics will argue that such a competitive venture will costs jobs. In Cincinnati's test case, that wasn't true. No one lost his or her job as a result of the competition.

All it will take is for the city to explore such a venture and for the city leaders to take the position that they will never be happy with the status quo.

Will that require a little out of the status-quo box thinking? You bet.

Will considering such ventures possibly save the city - and its taxpayers money? Probably.

Is it impossible? Not at all, just ask the man with the newspaper clipping in his hand and the creative thoughts in his head.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Ironton Tribune. He can be reached at (740) 532-1445 ext. 12 or by e-mail to kevin.cooper@irontontribune.com.