Don’t treat Pasco citizens like DOPEs. Bring them serious plans, not just acronyms | Editorial

“Make government so simple that a DOPE could run it,” Pasco City Councilman Leo Perales declared about his proposed Department of Pasco Efficiency.

Did he workshop that title? Where did that DOPE logo come from? We get that he wanted to riff on Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but come on.

dope n \dōp\ (informal) a stupid person

As tempting as it might be, this is not a tongue-in-cheek essay mocking Perales as a dope. His DOPE is completely unnecessary, and we could do without the grandstanding, but DOPE is actually kind of dope.

dope adj \dōp\ (slang) very good

In a Facebook post about the plan, Perales wrote, “It’s about reimagining what efficiency means for Pasco and making it work specifically for our community.”

The DOPE proposal describes its core goals as “eliminating red tape, spending wisely and inspiring innovation.”

Those are the sorts of things anyone can get behind. Red tape bad. Wisdom good. The goals are so vague that a small government libertarian and a big government socialist could both support them, though each would interpret them very differently.

Read on, however, and the DOPE plan gets into some specifics. (Note to Perales: Next time, please release a pdf instead of more than two dozen screenshots of individual pages.) Perales chose priorities based on a 2023 community survey. They include downtown revitalization, retail expansion, job creation, workforce development and tourism development.

For example, on downtown revitalization, the plan notes that only one-in-four residents rated downtown vibrancy positively. To improve that, Perales suggests investing in pedestrian-friendly infrastructure and public spaces to make downtown more inviting for residents and businesses. He also would offer incentives to encourage restaurants, shops and entertainment venues to open.

Those are sound ideas. The city would need to work out some details, not least where the money would come from and who gets incentives, but a concerted effort to revitalize Pasco’s core would be welcome.

That’s why Pasco is already working on downtown revitalization and other projects. The current city budget identifies efforts to improve community vitality, safety and quality of life. A downtown master plan exists. So does a bike-pedestrian plan.

How much work Pasco can do to implement them depends on money, which is in short supply these days. City expenditures increased rapidly in recent years. There was a surge in debt-funded capital projects, but even discounting that, current biennial spending was budgeted at $358 million compared with $197 million just six years ago. That’s an 82% increase. That’s not all inflation.

The increased spending coupled with the end of federal pandemic assistance leaves the city struggling to balance its books.

DOPE proposes exploring “a variety of revenue-generating tools” as well as “emphasizing lean and efficient government as a necessity.” Again, these are laudable goals, but Pasco doesn’t need a poor-man’s DOGE to spell them out.

Voters chose a Republican majority on the council, including Perales, in part hoping that they would bring fiscal responsibility, presumably without having to rely on a new department.

Perales’s DOPE plan never justifies its own existence. It offers commonsense solutions to obvious challenges. It’s dope to see it all spelled out in one place, but these are issues that the city council and city staff have worked on for years.

Perales joined the council only a year ago, so the public might forgive him for feeling frustrated that he hasn’t been able to turn everything around to his liking right away.

But with DOPE he risks coming off as a know-it-all and alienating his council colleagues. They don’t need a fancy logo and Trump-inspired new department to tell them that there’s work to do. They know that.

Perales got his headline and social media love, but he needs to show that he can work with the rest of the council to get things done, not just sell DOPE.

dope n \dōp\ (informal) an illicit drug used for intoxicating or euphoric effects