June 18, 2007 1:37PM # The Suburban Spending Machine By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE A few weeks ago [I noted](https://www.cato.org/2007/06/06/what-a-county-government-does-when-it-has-too-much-money/) that the $3.3 billion county budget in one of Washington’s wealthy suburbs, Fairfax County, had a bit of fat in it, such as manners classes for kids. This weekend [the *Washington Post* reported](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061601038.html) that “a $2 million \[swimming pool\] renovation \[in neighboring Arlington County\], dedicated yesterday, is part of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority’s effort to woo residents from the increasing number of pools run by homeowners associations, officials said.” Maybe if the private sector is providing a service, taxpayers could be relieved of that burden. If the argument is that government-run pools are intended to serve poor children who don’t have access to private pools, we could debate that policy. But the *Post* article makes clear that Northern Virginia government officials see themselves as competing in a “market” to attract customers from the pools provided by homeowners associations. And that seems a strikingly inappropriate mission for government. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).