Editorial: Inflation hitting government always hits taxpayers

Inflation is sending prices through the roof, from making breakfast and cleaning your house to buying a car and renting an apartment.

All of them are not only up but also continuing to climb. Restaurants are marking more menu items as “market price” because of the rapid fluctuation, elevating a chicken dinner to the same status as a whole lobster.

But those increases are not just hitting families and businesses. They also are impacting government.

The Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County has confirmed that inflation has caused the organization that supplies water to more than 122,000 customers in five counties and sewer to 30,000 homes and businesses to go dramatically over budget.

How much? For the last month of the 2021-22 fiscal year, the overrun has topped $1 million.

It’s a dramatic nod to the fact that providing water is more than just turning a tap and letting the liquid flow. Water itself might be pulled from the Upper Yough River or Beaver Run Reservoir. The water itself may fall from the sky or flow in a stream, but the cost of filtration, pumping and piping it isn’t cheap when inflation is low. When it is high, it’s hard to swallow.

Business manager Brian Hohman points to escalating costs for chemicals and pipes over recent months, but more than half of the overage is for paving materials.

That means local municipalities also are going to be hit hard. So will PennDOT. So will fire departments — both government-supported and volunteer.

And fuel is up more than 50% over three years. April 2019 prices were about $3 a gallon. They now top $4.76 a gallon.

Just those two line items could point to two paths for government agencies. They can budget more money to pave the roads, to fill the gas tanks, to drive the trucks, to mow the grass and to plow the roads. Or they can try to stay within budget, which will mean stretching that money as far as it will go.

The problem with stretching is that a lot of the things municipalities and other agencies do aren’t really options. They can’t not pave roads after a water line burst — but they can triage projects to put money into the most important ones while waiting and hoping the little potholes don’t grow out of control. They can’t not plow the roads in a snowstorm. The fire department can’t not fill the tanks in the firetrucks. The police cars can’t just sit in the parking lot.

The Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County has passed a budget with no rate hikes and intends to rely on its $27 million surplus, which is good business. Not every government agency will be able to do that. PennDOT, for example, rarely passes up an opportunity to pass on the costs with increased fees.

So if the budgets have to increase, that means ultimately higher taxes for households and businesses.

Great. One more escalating bill to add to the pile for taxpayers — the people who are always depended upon to do the real belt-tightening no one else can afford.