Columbus is picking winners and losers. Taxpayers need to unplug Smart Columbus.

This article was originally published in The Columbus Dispatch.

The city of Columbus spends $1 million of tax money on e-bikes and accomplishes nothing but giving your money to people who don’t need it. That wasn’t the headline of the article that caught my eye recently but, after reading it and digging into the story, it would have been a more accurate one.

E-bikes are great. I own one. They aren’t a necessity, and there’s certainly no good reason for taxpayers to subsidize them for Columbus residents making up to $150,000.

The current $500,000 frittering of city largesse follows two previous $250,000 giveaways the city claims resulted in the purchase of 289 e-bikes.

Who got them? How often do they ride them? Do they still have them? How many were stolen or sold? How many car trips were avoided? Just as curiously, how did the city choose the five exclusive retailers where the generous subsidies must be spent? If anyone in the city knows, they aren’t making that information easily findable online.

People like free money and other oxymorons

Instead of insightful metrics to justify taxpayer support, the city instead touts the rush of applicants to take advantage of the program as proof. The only thing it proves is that people will gladly take advantage of “free money,” an oxymoron if ever there was one.

I don’t begrudge the recipients; they made a perfectly rational choice.

According to the article, the city is giving away your money for e-bikes “because they are low-cost, energy-efficient, and climate-friendly, and can save the owner thousands of dollars… over a car.” Even if all that were true, surely anyone with a six-figure income can make the budgeting decisions necessary to buy their own e-bike.

An accountant might look at a $1 million spend over 3 years in an annual city budget of more than $1.2 billion as immaterial. A million dollars is still a lot of money and where there’s smoke of spending silliness, there’s usually a dumpster fire of burning taxpayer cash.

This e-bike giveaway is no different. It’s part of the “Smart Columbus” program that’s already spent more than $55 million with virtually nothing tangible to show for it.

To be fair, most of that money came from a federal grant and the Paul G. Allen Philanthropies. Mr. Allen is free to spend his money however he pleases and I’m glad he chose Columbus, but the federal money still comes from taxpayers or borrowed is from China. Government officials still have a responsibility not to squander it.

City picking winners and losers

I read through as much of the 547-page report from Smart Columbus as I could stand. With one glaring difference, it reads like one of the hundreds of management presentations of businesses for sale that I saw during my 40-year business career. The difference is that while all the presentations endeavor to put the glossiest spin on the case, unlike Smart Columbus, the businesses all produced real, tangible value for the money.

The best that Smart Columbus can show are some electric vehicle charging ports and a parking app. The parking app is great, but every metro-area city I’ve been in the last few years has one, so it’s hardly unique. As for EV charging ports, why should taxpayers pay for them when the benefits — again — go largely to those wealthy enough to afford an EV and the companies who sell them?

Anyone who remembers high school or undergraduate economics classes should know that the government picking winners and losers in a market economy is rarely good for taxpayers or the economy. There’s little in the $55 million of total Smart Columbus spending that couldn’t be done by the private sector, if there was indeed a market for it.

I’m glad Columbus got the money that was going to be spent by some other city, but the real problem remains when federal, state and local governments spend taxpayer and borrowed money on things the government simply doesn’t need to do.

Now that Smart Columbus has finished its original mandate with other people’s money, its director is trying to keep the gravy train rolling with a new program to promote “digital equity.” That’s virtually certain to be an ever-widening and shape-shifting money pit.

The reason our government — and our debt — is growing so much faster than our ability to pay for it is because once government entities or programs are established, they never go away — even after they fulfill their original mandate.

The smart bet for Columbus taxpayers is to unplug Smart Columbus.

New Albany resident Philip Derrow is a retired business owner. He was a two-term member of the New Albany-Plain Local Board of Education.