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State Vs Federal Law - 12/6/2010 6:22:42 AM

KenDckey

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In a context of Revenue. I was wondering what would happen if the states set out upon a policy of enforcing Federal law, whatever the Fed isn't enforcing, and billing it back to the Fed.

An example of how the revenue stream at state and local level would be increased. The police have a building (usually several). One for the enforcement of law, one for the storage of those that don't agree it should be enforced, and one for the maintenance of them all (this is an oversimplification so is grossly understated). Each building costs $800 a square foot (for those in construction that is reasonable or even cheap). Each building requires to be rented from the Facilities Manager on a square foot basis. The rent includes the cost of procurement of this building and the next one and the maintenance required (i.e. an Electrician gets $45 an hr [union scale] and it takes a couple hours to change a light bulb because he has to come out and figure out what bulb he needs then has to go back to get it). If you live in say, San Jose, CA where new buildings are built for a 15 year life, demo and build a new one. your $10 million building will cost the department about 1.5 million a year in construction costs another few hundred thousand for maintenance and the down payment on the next building So llets call it $2 million a year building rental. Then there is personnel costs. We bill for the officer's time, his supervisors time (all the way up to the Mayor/Govenor/Board of Supervisor level) the accounting clerks time, the comptrollers time, administrative assistants to keep up witht he laws, lawyers, 911 dispatchers and on and on. So the costs of enforcing would then be passed to the Federal Government. If the legislature got rid of a bunch of state laws and enforced them only as Federal laws, the state wouldn't have to cover the costs of the counties and cities.

Now the Federal Government would have to pay. Then the states would have the revenue to pay for whatever they wanted.

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RE: State Vs Federal Law - 12/6/2010 9:08:56 AM

Musicmystery

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quote:

Now the Federal Government would have to pay. Then the states would have the revenue to pay for whatever they wanted.

That's pretty short sighted. You're in a conflict of interest position. The Federal government would then have to assess the revenue, and either the taxes or the debt would come back to you, and the loss of funds would potentially mean loss of other funding for the states. Meanwhile, the additional bureaucracy involved in your plan would eat up additional state and federal dollars.

It's also legally flawed.

(in reply to KenDckey)

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RE: State Vs Federal Law - 12/6/2010 9:36:32 AM

MrRodgers

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Well I am not so sure about your costs. Warehouses can be built for about $60/foot ($800/foot hard cost is a very nice office bldg.) plus that doesn't include the land. If this was done and the Feds did have to pay, they'd take it out of some other money the states receive.

(in reply to Musicmystery)

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