Years ago when I served on our City Council, the idea was floated for a levy to fund police and fire services.  I remember commenting that my problem with such a proposal was that police and fire were what we were supposed to be doing with the tax revenue we provided.  What would be next?  A levy to pave roads?  Full disclosure:  I ended up supporting the police and fire levy.  But the problem has only grown.  Too many governmental entities have veered off task to such a degree that we now discuss levying basic services while allowing extraneous services to quietly remain funded through general funds.

Mark Steyn wonders about New York:

"By the way, doesn’t government have a compelling public purpose in keeping the streets free of snow? Too boring for Bloomberg, who flew off to his weekend pad in Bermuda and left New Yorkers without second homes offshore to make the best of it. That’s the very model of a can-do technocrat in the age of Big Government: He can regulate the salt out of your cheeseburger but he can’t regulate it on to Seventh Avenue. "

Great stuff at NRO.