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Today's Date
July 31, 2010
• • •
The Fall Trade Directory is now available.
Click here to find out where to get a copy.
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The next steering committee meeting is October 28 in Cascade Locks. Contact the GLCC for more information.
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Now is the time to order your display ad for the winter trade directory. Contact the GLCC
for more details.
RiverHOURS Poised to Soften Local Budget Shortfalls
Summer 2009
Will local unions and county officials consider an outside-the-box solution for budget shortfalls?
by Karen Harding
GLCC Steering Committee
Local counties in the Columbia Gorge area are facing lay-offs that will directly affect the health and safety of our local communities. As reported in the Hood River News, police, fire and public works departments are facing reductions in staff that would render them ineffective during
critical times.
The county, by law, must balance the budget. Steep decline of timber revenues and loss of federal and state funding crucial to various county programs combine to cause this crisis for the community. Higher taxes in a weakened, unraveling economy are unlikely to solve the crisis.
County officials have been working for several years to lay the groundwork for alternative funding sources, especially renewable energy technologies. Whether there will be enough time for the revenue from these alternatives to mitigate the loss of current revenues is doubtful. Budgets are being slashed and consolidated; positions are left unfilled.
Losses pile up
Concurrently, unions and their members are facing shared pay cuts or loss of member jobs altogether. Those workers and their families will be competing for jobs in a very challenging job market. The community will lose their expertise if they have to leave the area.
The loss of workers and the vital county services that they provide will have a crucial impact on county residents. The impact on employee morale, as county departments are unable to continue to function at an adequate level, is also a significant issue for the whole community. Many realize that selling off the commons (our county forests) to fund our county services every year results in an ever more degraded environment. An economy built upon consumer goods, and profit from market and real estate inflation, is widely recognized as unsustainable.
The basis of our economic system must shift from consumption of resources to employment through human services, taking care of each other and our bioregion. From this perspective,
cutting services of the county workers, fire, maintenance and health workers, police, and teachers, is a big step backwards.
Another way to pay
The county has vital work that needs to be done. The county has skilled workers that need jobs. What is it that is missing? Small pieces of paper, Federal reserve notes, or just the digital entries in bank accounts are what is missing!
The GLCC has issued RiverHOURS to its members in four counties of the Columbia Gorge for the past five years. The amount of interest-free currency in circulation has grown slowly, based upon the goods and services offered by those who choose to be members.
Local currency programs are demonstrating the usefulness of local money on a very small scale in their communities across the country. There is, at the present time, no program in the country that has moved into local government and union acceptance.
This was not always the case. According to Thomas Greco in his book, Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, during the Great Depression of the 1930’s there were
literally thousands of currencies, called scrip, put into circulation by a variety of public or private agencies. They were intended to supplement the supply of scarce official money, so people could pay for the goods and services that they needed. Some were more successful than others, depending upon how the scrip was placed into circulation and how it was circulated.
Why here?
Hood River, Skamania and Klickitat Counties have small, rural, entrepreneurial populations involved in agriculture, tourism, and a variety of businesses that make this an ideal place to do a pilot project of local currency on a larger scale.
A public-private partnership could involve the Gorge Local Currency Cooperative being authorized to issue RiverHOURS to supplement county workers’ pay for the amount of the cost-of-living increase that has been cut from the budget. Another option would be to issue funds for the employee hours needed to run the Hood River County Library next year.
A smaller pilot test would be to issue one RiverHOUR per capita of county residents and divide that amount into county employee paychecks. A successful demonstration of the benefits that local currency can provide, on a scale large enough to make a difference, could be expanded to cover the budget gap for the county.
Are our local governments willing to try a real alternative to our debt-based, collapsing economic system? Will local unions support a payroll plan that includes local currency if it saves jobs and promotes a healthy local economy? Contract acceptance by the county and the unions could promote circulation throughout the county on a scale that would allow our communities to function efficiently. Once distributed into worker paychecks, local businesses could accept them for the portion of their goods and services that are generated locally. They could pay a portion to their workers. The guarantee that the county would take the local currency back for taxes and fees, to be recirculated, would promote enough assurance for everyone to use it.
Outside of the Box
Use of a local currency has the potential to take a community beyond traditional economic thinking. As the local system becomes large enough, it can provide for many basic local needs. A mindset of hoarding, promoted by scarce federal dollars, can shift to a mindset of generosity with enough circulation of local currency.
A system that encourages spending for local services employs many more people, valuing and expanding the possibilities of work that cares for people and place. Scarce federal dollars are freed up for non-local goods.
Yes, this is out of the box! To pioneer this kind of partnership through the current, unprecedented crisis requires vision, trust and commitment to the future of our community.
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The Local Currency Education Project is a joint venture of
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updated
July 4, 2009
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