The end of the year brings with it budget proposals. And when it comes to a gut punch concerning how much our county is awash in statism and unbiblical civil government, the budget proposals take the cake.
Prepare yourself for the abuse, because here we go.
Lancaster City
Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace proposed a 2023 budget with an 8% property tax increase. The estimated revenue from forced property taxation is a cool $32.2 million. Another $8.4 million comes from stealing the labor of city residents via the Earned Income Tax. What’s all that loot needed for? Public safety, of course. The proposed expense for city police clocks in at just under $29.5 million. (Fire adds another $13.1 million.) We need more money to…keep you safe! Par for the course, government overreach and forced taxation is ever presented as for our own good.
Lancaster County
The Republican-controlled Lancaster County Commissioner board has also produced a budget proposal of their own. The county plans to forcefully confiscate over $125 million in real estate tax payments. Another $37 million will come from fees and fines. The county also expects to receive over $90 million in grants. (The topic of grants is a problem in and of itself that I cannot address fully here. Suffice it to say that these state and federal grants carry with them the problems of forced taxation and manipulation of the economy. It is easy to assume these grants are “money for nothing,” but they are not.)
How will the money be spent? I encourage you to look at the budget proposal put forth by the county commissioners on the county website. But I will provide a few highlights here.
Judicial Operations call for $30 million, with $11.7 million going to adult probation and $4.2 million to juvenile probation.
The county prison needs $34 million to operate.
Funded Agencies account for $107 million in expenses. The breakdown: Children & Youth ($49 million); Behavioral Health/Developmental Services ($32 million); Office of Aging ($11 million); Domestic Relations ($7 million); and Drug & Alcohol ($6 million).
(In case you were wondering, we’ve received the gut punch and are now being pummeled into submission by a Nanny State that will take care of all our problems.)
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons said “congratulations” were in order for producing a budget proposal without a tax increase. I’m not sure congratulations are appropriate for forcing county residents to fund a Nanny State.
Sure, in some sense, no tax increase is “better” than a tax increase. But that is sort of like saying the thief stealing my television set is “better” than the thief stealing my car. How about we condemn all theft instead of commending ourselves for only stealing the same amount this year as we did last year?
Townships
Here is a sampling of some of the county’s townships quest to use your money to manage affairs.
Manheim Township’s proposed budget calls for over $9 million in property taxes. Earned Income Tax will bring in another $9 million, and Real Estate Transfer Taxes at least $2 million. The greatest expense? You guessed it: public safety (nearly $19 million).
East Hempfield Township will bring in $2.5 million from property taxes and $5 million from income taxes.
East Cocalico Township intends to collect $1.9 million in property taxes (and about the same amount in income tax). The police department takes the largest share of expenses at $3.1 million.
Forced Taxation and Unbiblical Civil Government
The heart of the matter is the issue of forced taxation and a socialistic vision for society. The mayor of Lancaster and the Lancaster County Commissioners, among others, apparently have no qualms with forcing Lancastrians to fork over their money in order to keep us safe and provide us with services.
And if the government’s role is to keep us safe, help people get off drugs, rehabilitate criminals, and manage the troubled youth, then it makes perfect sense to ask for millions of dollars to fund the socialistic departments. (Did I say “ask” for the money? It would be nice if they were simply “asking” for these monies, but see what happens when you don’t pay your property tax—I think you also pay for a tax collection department.)
Practically, how do we get out of this mess? The first thing that needs to happen is Lancastrians need to embrace the theonomic (God’s Law-Word) vision for society. Only the Word of God provides a settled standard for what civil magistrates are authorized to do. The Bible lays out the role of the civil government and the standards to which it is held.
Concerning its role, the civil government is meant to punish evil and praise the good (cf. 1 Peter 2:14). The only role the government has in keeping you “safe” is punishing evildoers. When they fail to do that, you will be at risk of more evil being committed against you: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
Police officers roaming the streets, probationary services, and correctional facilities do not fall under the category of punishing evil. The responsibility of protection falls to the family, not the state. An armed citizenry, combined with a civil government that will indeed punish evil according to the biblical prescriptions, is the greatest deterrent to crime. (And fire departments were historically funded by means other than forced taxation, and that option remains, despite the layers of bureaucracy encrusted over the modern, statist mind.)
The Bible not only explains the role of the civil government, but it also gives the standard to which it is beholden: God’s Law. The state is not authorized to steal money from you simply because it has a “good work” to do in taking care of the alcoholic down the street or putting an ankle bracelet on some parolee. “Thou shalt not steal” applies to the prince as much as it does to the pauper. Taxation is to be given freely, to whom it is due, but just as with the tithe, the state is not authorized to penalize you for not giving away your own money. God will judge us on how we spend our money.
Only the theonomic position can deal with these problems. Neither natural law proponents nor a vague Christian worldview can provide any coherent ideological or logical protection against what we are seeing. If the Bible does not say “Thou shalt not steal” to the magistrate and the Bible does not define the role of the civil government, then what do we have left?
More gut punches, I think. Or worse yet: we become unconscious to the beating.
Chris Hume is the host of The Lancaster Patriot Podcast and the author of several books, including Seven Statist Sins. He can be reached at info@thelancasterpatriot.com.
