Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post, for one, suggested that local governments increase taxes by $50 million a year, with the money going to more plows and salt spreaders. With such a surfeit of equipment, Pearlstein said, District mayor Adrian Fenty and his cohorts could then pledge to clear all streets of snow within 24 hours of the next storm, regardless of its wrath.

The city has proven itself capable of clearing the streets in a timely manner after the typical worst-of-season snowstorm.

But such a promise would never be kept, and should not be made. The current situation is about as good as it is likely to get — and that ain’t bad. Suppose Mayor Fenty, who is up for re-election this year, adopted Pearlstein’s proposal and the city’s residents acquiesced to the plan. If Fenty is a rational politician (and he appears to be so, despite his penchant for angering almost everyone he encounters), he would have no incentive to spend a dime of this additional revenue on snow removal equipment. What hit the District was a once-in-a-century weather phenomenon (literally — the last snowstorm of such magnitude occurred in the 19th century) and the odds are exceedingly slim that a series of similarly massive storms will occur next year or anytime before the city’s next several mayoral elections. The city has proven itself capable of clearing the streets in a timely manner after the typical worst-of-season five- or six-inch snowstorm — a tremendous improvement over the days when Marion Berry occupied the mayor’s office and the city’s method for removing snow was called “spring.”

Spending the additional $50 million a year on snowplows and salt spreaders would buy the mayor no political goodwill other than (maybe) to insulate him from criticism were the city to be struck by another once-a-century storm. Accordingly, any politician worth his salt would use the new revenue to reward friends, smite opponents, and satisfy other political constituencies, rather than buy equipment that would sit largely unused until it depreciated into dust.

Insuring against any such extremely rare event is problematic for any entity, public or private. The recent financial crisis was to a large degree the result of AIG’s struggling with an unprecedented decline in home prices, against which it in effect offered insurance to various investment banks. AIG eventually stopped investing the revenue it received from its credit default swap contracts so as to make sure it would have sufficient funds to meet its obligations in case home prices collapsed. Unfortunately, it parked the money in other turbo-charged investments that were also likely to tank in the event that home prices were to collapse, which is precisely what happened.

Similarly, a government that increased taxes to prepare for an exceedingly rare snowstorm would quickly forget its promises and spend the money elsewhere. What was the cost to AIG executives for their dereliction? Any stock they owned in the company evaporated and most of the senior execs lost their jobs — harsh, but most will manage to scratch out a living. For Adrian Fenty, being caught unprepared for a second mega-blizzard would cost him re-election in four years time — maybe. Again, no big deal.

Governments pretend to dedicate new revenue streams to specific purposes all the time, and usually to no avail. Most states sold their citizenry on lotteries by promising to use the money generated to fund education. Untold governments have pledged higher tobacco taxes to smoking cessation and the treatment of tobacco-related illnesses, but almost without exception spending on those programs goes up much less than the revenue that comes in. The powers-that-be explain away such differences — if they are forced to — by saying that while all the new money does indeed go to schools or smoking cessation or drug rehab or pre‑K, some of the other dollars that had been going to those programs got redirected elsewhere. Of course these are ruses — no one cares exactly which dollars go to what project, only how much money is spent overall.

Governments should certainly spend money to prepare for real disasters. The blizzards of 2010, though they inconvenienced practically everyone in the region, did not qualify as a disaster in any sense of the word. Soon after the storms ended, the streets were plowed, Metro Rail returned to its usual state of dysfunction, and life got back to normal with little lost but a few days of work. Let us not pretend that a munificent government can — or would — prevent another such occurrence if only it had more of taxpayers’ money.