Oct 1, 2026 · 49 min · 10 segments
Mark Moses, Senior Fellow at the California Policy Center and author of The Municipal Financial Crisis, joins me to discuss why local governments still face fiscal pressures and what taxpayers should…
Mark MosesGuest
Vance GinnHost
I wonder from kind of your perspective, Mark, what are the main roles that the local government should do? Maybe that's a good place to start.
If we can understand, we know that there's a problem with local debt and spending and taxes.
But where should we start kind of our basic premise of what are those roles for the local government?
It's to help foster the environment where they're free to trade, associate, where they're free to solve their problems.
And where they can count on the enforcement of contracts that they're involved in so that they can – I mean, that's really part of what we've accomplished in our civilized state.
If you think about there are many parts of the world where you can't start a business because – You've either got fear of your own physical day-to-day security, or there's no such thing as an enforceable contract.
And if we just stop there, if we could do that much with our local government, that would be a big step towards returning to...
Again, the original concept of the local government was put in place as a means to the ends of the residents.
And so it's that creeping beyond that, and we can talk about why we get that systemic creep beyond that, that is really the fatal move that dooms a lot of these organizations into administrative and financial turmoil.
It reminds me of, I guess, when you think about Congress, the federal government, the state government is really there, like you were referring to, of protecting liberty, of protecting our liberty in order to have those contracts and everything else.
And it's not like when it goes to the local government that that somehow changes everything.
The government is still the government that has to, like you said, extract resources from the private sector in order really to do anything.
I wonder from kind of your perspective, Mark, what are the main roles that the local government should do? Maybe that's a good place to start.
If we can understand, we know that there's a problem with local debt and spending and taxes.
But where should we start kind of our basic premise of what are those roles for the local government?
It's to help foster the environment where they're free to trade, associate, where they're free to solve their problems.
And where they can count on the enforcement of contracts that they're involved in so that they can – I mean, that's really part of what we've accomplished in our civilized state.
If you think about there are many parts of the world where you can't start a business because – You've either got fear of your own physical day-to-day security, or there's no such thing as an enforceable contract.
And if we just stop there, if we could do that much with our local government, that would be a big step towards returning to...
Again, the original concept of the local government was put in place as a means to the ends of the residents.
And so it's that creeping beyond that, and we can talk about why we get that systemic creep beyond that, that is really the fatal move that dooms a lot of these organizations into administrative and financial turmoil.
It reminds me of, I guess, when you think about Congress, the federal government, the state government is really there, like you were referring to, of protecting liberty, of protecting our liberty in order to have those contracts and everything else.
And it's not like when it goes to the local government that that somehow changes everything.
The government is still the government that has to, like you said, extract resources from the private sector in order really to do anything.
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