Jeff Mandell, a Chicago attorney, is a former Legislative Director of the Religious Action Center.
I was a first-hand witness to
DC’s snow emergency this week. Trudging along Capitol Hill’s snow-clogged streets
and seeing the entire city – and the federal government it hosts – at a
standstill was an amazing and deeply distressing experience. I could not help
but feel that the havoc wreaked by the snow was, more than anything else, a
symptom of how impotent our government has become. In the 24 hours I spent in
DC this week, I saw numerous unplowed streets, snowed-in cars, and
fender-benders. But I didn’t see a single snow plow. The city was a complete
mess, more than 48 hours after last weekend’s snow had stopped falling. Tuesday
morning, with the federal government closed again in reaction to the snow
already on the ground and in fear of the snow predicted to arrive that
afternoon, I fled back home to Chicago. That is, I left Washington, where no
snow was falling, to fly back into an ongoing blizzard. And the only question
was whether my flight would leave DC; landing in Chicago was never in doubt.
Chicago knows how to handle
its snow, as well it should, being famous for harsh winters of prodigious
snows and ferocious winds. While it makes sense that Chicago would be more
prepared for winter than Washington would, that might not be true: according to
the newspaper coverage, Chicago has a fleet of 275
snowplows, while DC has a fleet of 250. Chicago
has only 10 percent more plows than DC, though Chicago, at 234 square miles (with more than
50,000 miles of streets and highways) more than triple the size of
Washington, at 68
square miles (of which area 10 percent is water). By the time the snow
stopped last night in Chicago (about 24 hours after it had started falling), we
had more than a foot in my city neighborhood, and the storm had set a
new record for one-day snowfall in Chicago in February
. Rush hour was a bit sticky Tuesday
night, but neither the roads nor public transit ground to a halt. Our small
residential street in the city was plowed by morning, and I could walk to the bus or the
train for my daily commute. Yet in Washington, a couple of inches causes paralysis; truth be told, even the prediction of a couple of inches often paralyzes DC.
This isn’t just a laughing
matter or a point of regional snobbery (though President
Obama chided Washington’s feeble response to snow last winter, when he had
recently moved into the White House). The cost of Washington’s inability to
clear the streets is staggering: The Office of
Personnel Management estimates the each day the federal government closes
because of weather costs taxpayers approximately $100
million.
After reading that estimate – $100 million per day! – I looked upon the snow piled in D.C.’s streets with
more than just personal frustration. The snow became an affront to the efficacy
of our government – simultaneously reinforcing the skepticism of those who
insist our government can’t confront the challenges we face and blocking the
work that needs to be done for us to confront those challenges. For the total
cost of a few days worth of snow closures, I thought, the federal government
could give D.C., Virginia, and Maryland the funds to upgrade public transit, buy
more equipment, and train more people so that snow would no longer regularly
cause protracted disruptions in our nation’s capital. The whole nation would
kick in to prevent the waste and lost productivity our government suffers when
it has to shut down because its employees cannot get to work and their children
cannot get to school.
Yesterday’s Washington Post
contains a better
idea: D.C., Maryland, and Virginia could collaborate to prepare and to commit
that snow – even in large quantities – would not lead to prolonged regional
paralysis. As columnist Steven Pearlstein sets the goal: “There is no reason less than a
foot of snow should be allowed to disrupt work and school, and no reason
anything more than a foot shouldn’t be cleaned up within 36 hours.” That
seems more than reasonable. “There are lots of problems that cannot be solved just by
throwing money at them,” Pearlstein continues, “but snow removal is not one of
them.
This is a perfect example of how a relatively small
expenditure could protect against major disruptions, to residents of the DC
area and to the entire federal government. And yet, as Pearlstein notes, the
contemporary political climate is so reflexively hostile to the idea of taxation
that it is difficult to imagine his proposal gaining traction. Instead, he’ll
be pilloried for suggesting the government raise taxes and spend people’s
money, rather than letting them spend it themselves – even though snow removal
is a perfect example of the kind of problem that can’t be solved through
individual expenditures.
Representative Barney
Frank likes to say that “government
is the name we give to things we choose to do together.” And we often choose
those projects we undertake together because they are the kind of projects that
we cannot accomplish individually – slowing climate change, improving
infrastructure, reforming health care. As I said, this is one of those projects.
I know because it’s time to walk the dog, and some of my neighbors have not
shoveled their sidewalks.