Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Flushing our Tax Dollars Down Pretrial Release Agencies

As I read about state and local budget problems, I am angered by the idiocy of our elected leaders. It is completely unacceptable that the government budgets continue to fund unnecessary programs that lead to enormous budget gaps and increased taxes. Where I live in California, Governor Schwarzenegger, in his State of the State Speech, proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit spending more on prison operations than public schools in California. I simply do not understand how our priorities could have gotten so messed up.

In difficult economic time like these, where state and local budgets are hard hit by decreasing tax revenues, unnecessary government programs need to be summarily eliminated. One such program is pretrial release programs that provide irresponsible, unsecured OR releases. These programs cost millions of dollars per year and do nothing to promote public safety. They are of dubious value, even in good economic time. While the reduction of some government programs can be a difficult decision, the elimination of taxpayer sponsored get out of jail free programs (Pretrial Service Agencies) seems like an obvious choice.

3 comments:

  1. It is normal for our govenment to waste money. I know of only one elected official in our state who is personally financially responsible for any debt of thier office and that is the Sheriff. who would run for office if they had to be financially responsible for thier offices debt????

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  2. @Thomas I agree. Hopefully, the tide will change and government will come back to its senses by allowing the private sector in this country to flourish. I am highly skeptical of government programs. They are far less efficient and effective than the private sector. Our economy will improve only when the government embraces private sector industry growth, including the bail industry.

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  3. It seems that as an industry we need to do a much better job educating our elected officials about the benefits of bail and the problems with pretrail release.

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