It feeds people.
CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) funding has been around since 1974, and was enacted with bipartisan support. Liberals liked the goals of reducing poverty and eliminating blight. Conservatives liked placing money in the hands of private investors, and reducing the role of the federal government in what at that time was a labyrinth of federal grants.
But that has changed. According to a 2009 report prepared by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, a lot of the money is eaten up by excessive bureaucracy at the federal (5%), state (8%) and local (17%) levels. So if Cato is right, only 70% of the money spent by the federal government actually hits its intended target - the poor.
In addition to high administrative costs, the program has sometimes strayed from its goal of helping low-income families. According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, CDBG funds have been used for the Mark Twain House and Museum, Salvador Dali Museum and Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation. They've even been used for a shooting range in South Dakota (the feds caught that one).
"When you get the federal government involved in a sinkhole in Whitehall, you've created a tremendous amount of inefficiency along the way," notes Vic Mazziotti, and he's right. Most CDBG advocates concede that point. But, unwilling to cut off his nose to spite his face, Vic voted to take the money.
"If we don't spend this money, it will be spent for another community," he observed realistically.
Scott Ott, who wants to be Lehigh County's next County Executive, is an extremist who would send it back if he had his way. He abstained rather than dirty his hands voting for the CDBG money. From his comments at the time, he appears to have had three reasons.
1. Charities should feed the hungry, not the government. - This came through clearly in his his dialogue with Meals on Wheels, where he at one time volunteered as a driver. "Have they no family? Have they no church connections, no neighbors that love them?" Ott asked a Meals on Wheels advocate. "Maybe your agencies will get mentioned in a local news source," he said in what I could only call a condescending remark.
In short, he would allow old people to starve.
2. The Federal government has too much debt, so we can't use federal funds to feed the hungry. Claiming that Lehigh Commissioners are "the last line of defense for the taxpayer," Ott complains that the "Chinese communist government is fronting us money to feed 85 year old women in Lehigh County." So it's up to patriots like him to "exercise some restraint that the federal government seems incapable of exercising."
In short, he would allow old people to starve.
3. CDBG funding does not address federal problems. According to Ott, the "federal government is sending us money to do things that are of no national import." I was under the impression that poverty, hunger and affordable housing are federal problems.
In short, he would allow old people to starve.
Ott has an opponent in this race. Republican-turned-Democrat Tom Muller, a businessman about as comfortable in the world of politics as I would be in a state store. Tom has stated, "I think the job of County Executive is to serve everybody in the County, to work for you, to bring as much of our money that we send to Washington back here rather than to say, 'No thank you, I don't want it because you've got a national debt problem.'"
In fairness to Scott Ott, I have invited him to come onto enemy territory under a flag of truce and respond to this critical piece.
