The Daily News Of The Virgin Islands

HOW MUCH LONGER?

We are alarmed by the reported increase in members of the insular government personnel. One department reports an increase from 607 to 1,056 in a year's period. None is reporting a decline in the number of employees.

It is not the function of this newspaper to analyze the bureaus, departments, and agencies of this or any other government to point up specific examples of duplication of services, overlap of responsibilities, and wasteful activities abounding in an island territory of our small population.

It is, however, the function of this newspaper to sound a loud note of warning that it is economically and physically impossible that the situation continue. Eventually, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall reach the breaking point both here and in Washington, and this in turn portends the collapse of the nation's economic system.

The pork barrel holds only so much.

No one doubts that government is big business. In World War II, during the emergency years, it was necessary to create great bureaus, defense agencies, and investigation units under the guise of saving world freedom. Whether or not it was all really necessary, the fact remains that once it became the fashion to create larger units and many more of them, each one in turn has added personnel until the number of jobs has soared into the millions in the Federal government alone.

The experts disagree as to the necessity of the fat federal payroll. Defense operations, space explorations, and scientific experimentations involving nuclear physics have been a concern of Washington since the first atomic blasts.

Meanwhile, another phenomenon has appeared: the rampant rise of personnel in the local governmental unit and its astronomical cost.

Stateside local governments—state, county, city, town-ship—have added hundreds of thousands to the central government's millions of jobs.

Many believe that the recent stock market dip and the present business slump is a direct result of a tax structure which has reached the breaking point.

In our insular government an overloaded staff pouts directly to inefficiency and waste.

Perhaps it is too much to expect government personnel to economize themselves out of jobs or their departments out of inflated budgets. Our leaders are not that forthright.

However, we cannot continue much longer as we are.

The Virgin Islands have been often selected to demonstrate to foreign representatives how a small territory works.

The greatest service we could render to Washington and to the various states is a demonstration how an efficient, economical government works.

Or is this too much to hope for?