Who Should Pay for That?

Tonight there was something on the local news that really annoyed me.  And it effects every American that is reading this.  Does it effect anyone outside of America?  I can't answer that for sure, but it might.

Many of you may have figured out that I live near Syracuse, New York.  It's a small city by just about any standards yet it's the 5th largest (I believe) in the state.  It has a population of somewhere between 50K and 75K.  The population of the city is roughly 40% of the county that it resides in (Onondaga) yet they expect 60% of the sales tax revenue from the county.  And every time some company is planning to build something that may or may not be eligible for tax breaks, the city makes the decision, often bullying the county legislature into agreeing with them.  That includes the recent mess that involved the Destiny USA expansion on what was Carousel Center.  And yet the city, like many in America, is constantly struggling with finances.

Now you have the background of the situation.  It is an old city, one of the first in the state and one that was a boom town during the Erie Canal peak supplying something like 80% of the salt for the entire country (thus the nickname The Salt City).  And that means that a lot of the infrastructure is also old.  Every year there are several water main breaks.  Today there was a major one, effective 25% of the city including Syracuse University where commencement is scheduled for this weekend.  This break was so big that it destroyed the road on an entire city block, and that was before they began to dig to try to repair it!  They are expecting that the repair will take several weeks though they have been able to reroute water for most of the homes that were effected.

So what has me ticked off about this?  Pretty simple, the mayor's expectation that the state or federal government should be paying for these repairs.  Why is it that every city expects someone else to fix the problems that only effect the residents of the city?  Why should I pay to fix this?  I don't even live in the same county, nor do I get public water.  I'm on a well.  Why should someone who lives in Alaska be expected to pay for this when they are likely getting water from a well also?  Yet these cities expect that the taxes paid by the rest of the state and country should pay for these things instead of spending their income (taxes from the residents and sales tax from the county) properly on these things.  Think it doesn't happen elsewhere?  Think again.  My tax dollars go toward keeping New Orleans dry.  That's right, the city doesn't pay for the pumps to run 24 hours a day, that's paid for by the federal government.  And that's just one example that I know of.

I thought that was the purpose of a government, to take care of it's constituents.  I get that people who live in Syracuse are constituents of the USA, but what I don't get is why the mayor expects the state and federal government to maintain infrastructure that is only for the city residents.  A local government is supposed to take care of local infrastructure.  If that isn't the situation, what's the point of the local government?