There is something disturbing about our federal and provincial governments' seeming nonchalance about their growing deficits. One wonders how these officials can have one set of rules for themselves, and another for everyone else. Hospitals are a good example. Difficult economic times or not, Ontario's hospitals are required by law to balance their budgets. Any who fail to do so will relinquish control to a government overseer, who will do whatever is necessary, be it layoffs or closures.

Municipalities set their own budgets but are perpetually treading a very narrow path. On one side is the need to provide the services that keep a community attractive to investors, and on the other is the need to keep property tax increases as low as possible so as not to discourage said investors in the retail, industrial and residential sectors.

And senior levels of government are not shy about mandating programs to be administered by municipalities, health units and conservation authorities without providing adequate funding, or cutting funding to established, but mandated programs.

Another sore point is the hoops municipalities must jump through to get federal and provincial money. In the past few years some money for municipal infrastructure has been made available. The application process is complex and the timelines short. Smaller municipalities rarely have the staff to prepare applications with the required engineering and documentation, and must hire consultants that do not work cheap. Municipalities are being forced to gamble with ratepayers' money, and compete with each other for these dollars.

Enough with this competitive process that sees some municipalities get a lot while others get nothing. And most of all, enough with the focus on one-time and short-term funding. What municipalities - and hospitals, school boards, health units and conservation authorities - need is fair, stable funding. The current system might free governments from longer-term commitments and allow them to respond quickly to changing priorities, but it has created a growing administrative infrastructure at lower levels - an infrastructure we can ill afford.

Nowhere is this more evident than in health care. When hospitals and health units have to come up with two and three budgets based on estimates of what funding the government might provide, and a whole new administrative body known as Local Health Integration Networks is created to ... administer, something desperately needs fixing.

Perhaps when all is said and done, LHINs will ensure stability and viability. In the meantime, there seems to be no end to the need for high-priced administrators in health care, while front line staff are losing their jobs. Someone has apparently forgotten that a $350,000-plus per year administrator means nothing to a patient whose bedpan needs emptying or pain meds  administered.                    

–From the Listowel Banner