US Authoritarianism

I live in a county, without an incorporated city; so, our budget reflects the whole county. And thankfully, the county already breaks the budget down by percentages:
#1 - Public schools - 50%
#2 - Capital Improvements - 7.7%
#3 - Debt Service - 7.6%
#4 - Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services - 7.4%
#5 - Law Enforcement - 6.3%
#6 - Social Services - 5.6%
Everything else drops off sharply from here

Honestly, not all that unexpected. Education is expensive and is mostly done at the State and Local levels. So ya, that's most of the budget. "Capital Improvements" could probably be titled "roads, and a couple other things which barely count". So again, not a surprise. Roads are not cheap to maintain, especially in a rural county. I was surprised that law enforcement was as far down the list as it is. And also seeing Social Service being more than a rounding error was nice. All in all, not terrible.

Our city stopped spending money on cops, so the state passed a law saying that the city had to pay even more money to the cops. Then the city voters passed a law that basically said, "nuh uh!"

So then the state passed a constitutional amendment that mandated spending levels for our city, and only our city. The whole state got to vote on an issue that they weren't even involved in.

And that's how Kansas City lost free public transportation.

How do I even find this out? Is there a specific resource for this, or do I have to ask my City Hall?

My town is better than I thought. $25.6 million in expenses, $1.49 million of that is law enforcement. Or 5.7%

Edited because my decimal was over one place too far.

Hard to get my exact town but it does not seem very high but the closest large city is 15% but its unclear if that includes lawsuits for police misconduct which are common and large.

This was interesting to look up. My town's budget documents are laid out really well with lots of detail and commentary about WHY they spend money on things.

They lump all emergency services under one category which is 11% of the budget. Fire&Rescue is 1/75th of that and police and admin are the rest. Worth noting we have a volunteer fire department which I guess accounts for their extremely low budget.

Where are these numbers coming from ? My town looks like 7% and I see many others here around 10%, so how is there such a difference? OP should check their numbers or give more detail on what they included

Thicc blue line needs less donuts

Over in Lynnwood WA, it takes a lot to give people speeding tickets.

Just imagine how much it costs to park a cop car on the side of the road and to have someone judging how shiny the paint on each car is.... Too shiny? That's a rich asshole, let him thru. Mat finish? 🤔 Could be a car enthusiast.Toyota with mat finish, oh you don't live here! Here's your ticket! Don't think about coming back thru here, even if they closed the road and this is the only freeway entrance road left!

That’s a thick boy

Looked it up for my city. The budget is about 20% police budget. It's the 2nd largest expenditure for my city.

38% or ~160 million here.

can we just start making satirical flags that aren't real?

Putting up a pride flag is cool and all but im not keen on idiots ripping into me for that shit for no reason (i dont care, literally go complain anywhere else please) nor am i keen on becoming a public target. It's also just a really nice flag, unironically, a good flag.

i'm just so bored of people caring about flags.