A January 29th article in the Whittier Daily News quoted Rose Institute Fellow Douglas Johnson discussing increases in fees and fines as local governments face a budget crunch. The article is titled “Fees increase as governments scour for extra money.”
The article quotes Johnson saying, “In the last 10 years there’s been a big increase in public employee salaries and perks, but what’s fairly new is the nickel and diming (of residents) to pay these employees more rather than to, say, get better parks  .  . . Bell is the obvious example of this taken to an extreme but it happens a lot on a smaller scale.”
He also discusses the recent failure of failure of Proposition 21 which would have added a $15 boost to car registration fees, the proceeds of which were to go to state parks. Johnson says, “I don’t know any political professional who predicted that would lose…You can’t get a more generically happy cause than state parks. It was only 15 bucks a car, and it went down. We’re starting to see the people’s loss of faith in their government showing itself.”
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