Dave Powell

==Background==
* Libertarian 
* President of the Allegheny County Libertarian Party, again in 2008
==Works in Progress==
Hey all - this document is open for discussion/wordsmithing…perhaps we need both a press release and a Letter to the Editor format? This posting is also on the meetup.com discussion Board.
-DaveP
===Libertarian perspective on City - County merger===
: Rev: 6-18-2008
There are trial balloons being floated to guage the public's support for a proposed City/County merger. While we applaud the attempt to save the taxpayers money by merging services, we feel a closer look is warranted.
Short version: Is there any proposed reduction in size of government or taxes? If not, then NO!
Long version:
1: Government that is farther from the people (ie: larger geographical area, larger constituency pool) tends to be easier for the well-connected and moneyed to influence. Smaller government closer to the people tends to be more responsive as there is less money to influence politicians, who are also easier to vote out. For instance, it takes 350 petition signatures to run for City Council, but 10,000 to run for County Executive. If we hate our money being used for ill-considered projects in the city, how much will we like them to be used an hour out of town?
2: Cost savings would be nice of course, but we fail to see why we simply cannot remove any legal restrictions to subcontracting services to or from other municipalities (like Wilkinsburg does for the City to pickup it's trash). This way, if the county screws up, we can take back the service or hire a company to do it right.
3: Merging a government that taxes too much, spends too much, and is involved in too many areas that should be privately run with another similar but larger government seems to be compounding the problem. What actual mechanisms will we have to actually improve efficiency and reduce government?s size (in dollars spent and people employed)? With the lack of details so far the Libertarian Party cannot support this approach.
Put it this way, if your household spent way too much on credit cards and can no longer afford the mortgage and bills, would it help to move into the house next door with the same spending problems if you don't fix the underlying issues and still go to sporting events, buy DVD's, and eat sushi out all the time?
And as far as involuntary annexation goes, of course we all can see how successful the forced annexation of Allegheny City (ie: Northside) was.
Powell,David