Spitting In The Ocean
Restricting the supply of environmental restoration services
I have been on the phone all day with the Maryland Taxpayer Service, trying to sort out a problem that never should have happened. The relevance of this for today's rant is that I have a private business, so I pay taxes. As a company that does business with the State, I get paid with tax money, so I figure that is all fair enough.
But here's the thing. Except for a few precarious lines of financing, my firm is excluded from directly contracting for the vast majority of Chesapeake Bay restoration work. Any money that the State or federal government makes available for Chesapeake Bay restoration must first flow to either another government agency, a not-for-profit, or an academic institution. Private for-profit firms are not generally on the eligibility list.
Is there some fundamental reason why this should be the case? What is the difference between a not-for-profit and a for-profit firm that should bar the latter from serving Chesapeake Bay restoration goals for pay? For-profit firms pay taxes, and not-for-profits don't. Could it be that the government wants to avoid recycling tax money by only providing funds to the non-taxable not-for-profits?
A not-for-profit can pay its staff as much money as they wish. They can have fancy digs in either rustic or urban settings. What they cannot do is distribute profits to owners. Perhaps the government just doesn't want to pay tax dollars to fat-cat owners of firms. I mean, in a parallel universe.
It would be interesting to have the not-for-profits, government agencies and academic institutions explain why the Bay restoration is better off if private for-profit firms are excluded from the list of eligible service suppliers. I honestly do not know what argument they could make in favor of this arrangement. Except that, if they had to compete with the larger number of suppliers that would result if for-profit firms were allowed, they might not get as much of the money. But that is in their interest. Not the interest of the restoration effort.
I was at a Chesapeake Bay Program meeting recently, wherein a private firm was hawking an innovative means for sequestering nutrient pollution. During the question and answer period after the presentation, one representative of a state agency asked: "Aren't we opening the floodgates, if we allow private companies to advocate for their own particular innovative approaches for reducing nutrient pollution?"
My understanding of what this fellow was asking is, why should government agency staff have to deal with people flogging ideas that would profit their firms as well as helping to restore the Chesapeake Bay? Why indeed. The agencies, academic institutions and the not-for-profits were doing such a fine job without the private sector.
I am not saying that government agencies, not-for-profits and academic institutions do not provide any value to the Chesapeake Bay restoration effort. I would just point out that, over the same 25 years that the Bay Program has languished under its regime of restricted supply, other sectors of our economy have generated incredible innovation, making possible things that previously were not possible.
We could test Bay Program decision-makers' dedication to excluding private for-profit firms by asking, how useful would an innovation from a private for-profit firm need to be before they would consider amending this rule? Would they amend it if a firm brought to the table some process that could reduce nutrient pollution at one half the costs of current practices? How about a 30 percent efficiency enhancement? Do I hear 20 percent?