Paying for misguided borrowing

Regarding the story, “IOUs pave the streets,” Dec. 31:

Watching every level of government grow and spend money without any semblance of fiscal responsibility for years has finally come home to roost.

We pay our taxes for rational things. Streets and services used to be provided by property taxes. Year after year that income was adequate to maintain the streets.

Governments diverted this money by getting into pork-barrel spending on things the private sector should have been let alone to perform. Then they began providing huge salaries and benefits for oversized staffs.

The result is the spending on things that the government should not even be involved in has left nothing for the necessities. It is really a failure to prioritize that has now backed them into a corner.

Bob Driscoll

Woodland Hills

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Great story of California’s cities creating new ways to borrow against the future with nothing but imaginary ideas, notions and theories of how to manipulate money that doesn’t exist. They directly mirror Wall Street. We’re going down for the count at some point.

Rola A. Cook

Molalla, Ore.