Spokane Taxpayers Revolt Before the Bonds Come Due

Spokane has recently issued and sold $1,200,000 worth of bonds for the purpose of funding its debt and making some needed improvements. Finding the city in funds, the council has gone on planning improvements of various kinds until the people seem to have become alarmed. Visions of a floating debt of another half million are making property owners talk of injunctions as the only means of holding the city fathers in check and saving the city's credit.

The property owners of Spokane are wiser than those of most cities. The habit of the taxpayer is to wait until his money is spent, the debt is incurred, and he is called to pay, before making his protest, and then it is too late to do anything effective. When a city debt is incurred, a due regard for the public faith requires that it shall be paid, and while such debts nearly always are paid, the people who have to pay, feeling that they ought to have recourse or satisfaction of some sort, usually take it by turning out one set of officers and putting in another, and so consider the matter remedied. Too frequently it happens that the matter is not remedied at all by this action. Sometimes it is even made worse. The reformers—or 'reformers'—are always chosen on occasions of this kind, and turn out to be much like other people. They sooner or later rush into excesses, if not of a similar kind, at least of as objectionable a kind, and the taxpayers again find their substance wasted.

There is only one remedy for this sort of abuse, and that remedy the Spokane people seem resolved to apply. They are protesting before the mischief is done, and they are protesting so vigorously that their protests are going to be effective.

If taxpayers would give a little more attention than they do to public affairs they would have less reason than they now have to complain of bad government. It need cost them but little effort to keep themselves posted as to what is going on. Their daily papers give them full reports usually of what is done at the meetings of their servants, the officials, and sufficient notice of all expenditures is given through the official paper. None of these expensive undertakings which consume the public funds are entered upon without due notice. Why don't the taxpayers in all cities take note of these things in time, as the people of Spokane are doing, and lock the door occasionally before the horse is stolen?