As a taxpayer to Flathead County, I am embarrassed by the recent decision made by the county commissioners depriving lower income families the opportunity to receive Homebuyer Assistance. The decision by the commissioners speak to their extreme and hypocritical political ideology and distain for lower income families.
Flathead County has a long tradition to receiving and taking money from the state and federal government to include but not limited to the following: $20,000,000 under the American Rescue Plan; $19,000,000 for the expansion of the airport, $26,000,000 for strengthening the electric grid.
Yet they refused a grant of $9,000,000 provided by the state and private partnership that would help lower income people on the assumption it would represent a redistribution of money from wealthy taxpayers to people less fortunate and would represent a creeping form of socialism
Let me be clear that the working poor are paying taxes from their hard earned and lower salaries unlike the billionaires at Mar A Largo who retain advisors, who make a career of helping rich people avoid paying taxes through 1031 Exchanges, Generation Skipping Trusts, accelerated depreciation and more. Even Warren Buffet laments that his secretary pays a larger percent of her income in taxes than he.
The irony is that many of the working poor are people who will serve the wants and needs of the commissioners in time of need and pleasure whether it be the sanitation worker who removes their waste, the nurse assistant who will clean their bed pan when hospitalized, the employee at McDonalds’ who will serve their coffee or the municipal employee with three children who will clear a broken sewage pipe in front of their office.
The moral responsibility of the commissioners is to apply the grants without prejudice and to benefit the interests of the community at large. Like a good judge they must not let their preferences nor personal understating of how government should operate interfere with the granting process nor in any way harm the people they serve.
Edward Goldberg
Bigfork