I read this morning about a spate of vandalism in and around Raleigh over recent weeks. Just the headline, “More than 40 state-owned vehicles in Raleigh vandalized,” sounded pretty bad. But the more I read, the worse it got. This wasn’t some mass attack on a single night. No, it’s been going on for about a month, since mid-September. It’s happened at as many as six different locations around Wake County, many of them Department of Public Safety offices. (I’ll leave the irony of that for the moment.) Windows have been smashed, and cars have been set on fire.
And on top of all that property damage, credit cards have been stolen out of cars and used to buy more than $16,000 of gas in four counties. Even with gas prices as high as they are, that’s a lot of gas and a lot of fill ups.
Here’s where I started to ask some questions. Vandalism happens. I get that. But how has the state government allowed this to happen over and over for weeks? And how have they allowed $16,000 in fraudulent charges to pile up on their credit cards? If my wallet’s stolen, the first thing I do is cancel my credit cards. Did no one think to do that? Did they just not notice? If a business starts having break-ins or problems with vandalism, they install extra security cameras or personnel. (It’s for this very reason that the image we do have of the suspect comes from a security camera at a privately-owned gas station.) Did the state government make attempts to beef up security?
It matters because that $16,000 is my money and your money. The cars vandalized belong to us, the taxpayers. If the state incurs costs to repair or replace any of that property, that falls on us, too. If the state is going to own cars and have credit cards – which we’re all funding through our taxes – they need to be better stewards of the resources with which they’ve been entrusted. That’s just pretty difficult to achieve when these resources belong to taxpayers, which means they belong to everyone, which means they really belong to no one.
So better yet, maybe we should rethink how many cars the government should own and how many credit cards they should have in the first place. Government has a role to play, and this will necessarily involve owning some stuff. But the government’s just not well placed to manage fleets of vehicles or monitor credit card spending. They don’t tend to maintain buildings or parks as well as private owners. They’re not great at controlling costs and getting the best value for money.
Perhaps that means we should be trying to minimize state ownership wherever we can. Maybe, just maybe, that would give a better deal to all taxpayers, with fewer $16,000 gas spending sprees for criminals and quicker responses to vandalism and property destruction.
