Government funding

For a long time, I've had an issue with the way government, at seemingly all levels, funds its irregular/big-ticket items through the issuance of bonds. I mean, sure, the occasional "emergency" might come along where you need to have that new plow now or some such, but it would make much more fiscal sense, generally, to identify purchases you want to make a few years ahead of time, collect the necessary taxes first (and probably earn interest on them), then make the purchase, rather than pay interest on a bond. OK, there are other real-world issues with this concept (politicians keeping their hands off that pool of collected money, and voters trusting that to happen), but, in purely monetary terms, it makes more sense.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that bodies wouldn't try doing things the "smart" way because they legally couldn't. Part of my county is looking to set up a "library capital facility area" to build/expand libraries with (and generate a new bond at the same time), so I decided to look up that term in the RCW (Washington's statutes). LCFAs only exist to issue bonds for library property work, and recoup taxes to pay off those bonds... that's the extent of their taxing power. Another limitation on them... they have to have a board consisting of at least 3 legislators from the counties included... which, if I'm not mistaken, means our 3 county commissioners are automatically at the helm of this new entity, people who could have just issued library bonds in the first place themselves.

So... it's a shell game, like most bureaucracy. That said, with this particular setup, I'm pretty glad that there is no non-repayment taxing authority for this particular construct... it's still quite a surprise.