Photo courtesy of Sarasota County.

The county commission held a transportation workshop recently, walking residents through the community's most pressing transportation infrastructure needs. The agenda covered capital improvement planning, unprogrammed thoroughfare improvements, and an overview of current and alternative funding options.

For the first 25 slides, county staff led the presentation. At slide 26, however, a private firm's branding appeared on screen. That section, titled "Balancing Needs and Forecasted Revenues," had been outsourced to outside consultants hired to accomplish four tasks: identifying transportation needs some of which was drawn from the Trails Master Plan and the Bike/Ped Master Plan, comparing those needs against projected revenues, exploring new or updated funding sources, and assembling the findings into a functional work program.

This raises a fair question: why were taxpayers charged to hire a consultant for work that falls squarely within the basic responsibilities of government staff?

Identifying community needs, understanding available revenue, and building a work program around both are not specialized or exotic functions. They are the core duties of any competent public transportation planning department. Paying a private firm to perform them separately from existing employee salaries is difficult to justify on its merits.

The third task on that list likely explains why the outside firm was brought in at all. Slide 35 presented what was labeled as a "Menu of Potential Funding Sources," a collection of proposed new taxes, tolls, and fees. A disclaimer printed in bright red stated that the items were not recommendations and were included for discussion purposes only. That caveat may have been intended to provide political cover, but it strains credibility. Items do not end up on formal presentation slides by accident, and few people in the room were likely persuaded that the menu was purely academic.

What was notably absent from the entire presentation was any discussion of reprioritizing the general fund, redirecting surtax revenue from government infrastructure projects toward transportation needs, or identifying ways to address the funding gap within the county's existing tax and fee structure. The possibility of doing more with current resources was never seriously entertained.

True to the direction the presentation seemed designed to nudge, commissioners responded by requesting additional information on raising the local sales tax above its already elevated rate. No other county government in Florida currently imposes a sales tax surcharge above one percent. This county is now exploring whether to go higher, not because every alternative has been exhausted, but because pursuing a tax increase is easier than making difficult budget decisions. Those are the same kinds of decisions that working families and lower-income residents navigate every single day.

The pattern here deserves scrutiny. Hiring consultants with public funds to generate proposals for raising additional public funds is not fiscal leadership. It is a way of insulating elected officials and staff from the political discomfort of prioritization. Before any conversation about asking residents to pay more, the commission owes constituents a genuine effort to find savings, realign existing spending, and demonstrate that current resources have truly been maximized. Taxpayers deserve that much before being handed another bill.

Christine Robinson is the Chief Executive Officer of The Argus Foundation.

Photo courtesy of Sarasota County.