To the editor:

One of the newer tricks of governments, to raise additional taxes or expand their scope of influence on citizens, is to create a semi-governmental agency and a commensurate taxing authority for it.

This gets around any restrictions for raising taxes (such as the state’s maximum tax increase), and makes it seem that we are getting something new. That something new is usually a function that the county is already doing, or should have been providing in the first place.

The issue before us now is the “Clean Water Utility.” Certainly the county should be concerned with keeping our water clean. But this issue sounds to me like it is, and should always have been, a county function. It is also not a new issue.

Clean water is a basic function of government, and I’m getting pretty tired of governments disguising tax increases with “special” bond issues or new taxing districts.

Hard economic times call for tough choices. In our personal lives, we have all had to cut out or postpone things that we need to do or want.

So our commissioners should make their clean water plans and get ready to implement them when the economy turns around.

When it does, revenues will increase and money will be available, if they do not spend it on some other issue.

Ed Schoenharl

Langley