It’s not hard to tell that times are tough, maybe the toughest they’ve been for a generation or more. And to be honest, it’s also not hard to tell how we got ourselves into this mess: a giant batch of short-term thinking. From Wall Street to Main Street, we indulged ourselves with the luxury of “now” figuring that tomorrow would take care of itself. We now are all living with the reckoning of that mistake in judgment.

Sadly, as billions of dollars are being spent to try to sure up those failed or failing financial institutions, we find ourselves at a crossroads of decision right here in Chester County: some, like County Controller Val DiGiorgio, are saying that the time has come for the county to cut funding to open space preservation, arguing that it is a way to cut county taxes.

And yes, it is, in the short term, just as the unregulated derivatives market seemed like a good way to make money four or five years ago -- but yet would it have painful and potentially irreversible consequences, as we’ve seen with the derivatives market and the housing and credit crisis. In essence, DiGiorgio and a number of his GOP colleagues seek to not just rob Peter to pay Paul, but rob Peter’s children and grandchildren as well, while over the long haul, shorting Paul, too.

No one needs to make the argument in defense of slowing development from a quality of life standpoint. Less sprawl, less traffic, less crowding equals better life. I know it and you know it.

The truth of the matter, though, is that DiGiorgio’s argument is a non-starter from a fiscally conservative standpoint, too — and it’s concerning that our county controller seems to lack a full understanding of the realities of public economics.

Put simply, study after study has shown development is wildly expensive for taxpayers, a fact conveniently forgotten by public officials who also, it turns out, often take campaign contributions from developers. The explosive pace of development has a cost — something each of you struggling to pay higher local, school and county taxes know all too well. $20 million saved today could mean hundreds of millions of dollars of extra expenditures in schools, roads and other expenses — all of our pockets.

That doesn’t make sense to me, and I bet it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people.

Do we need to squeeze every last nickel we can out of the county budget? Yes, without question. We need to run lean and mean, while still managing to provide the services even more in need at this time of crisis. Our two Republican County Commissioners, Terrance Farrell and Carol Aichele chose not to make further cuts to this year’s budget over the objections of Democratic Commissioner Kathy Cozzone.

I would like to see the commissioners go line by line and slash spending, as I was often ordered to do in the publishing industry, to cut expenses to the bare minimum to get the job done.

But slashing the open space program is penny wise and pound foolish and the kind of short-term thinking that has plagued us in recent years.

The False Argument of Cutting Taxes Versus Open Space Preservation

By Mike McGann