Politicizing Charity Is Dangerous

This November, Platte County voters will decide on whether to implement a quarter-cent sales tax in the county to support a new community children's services fund. The tax was placed on a ballot last week by a judge after the election board, for reasons that are unclear, hesitated to put the item on the ballot.

Everyone is for this, right? I mean, who can be against supporting kids?

I'm all for supporting kids. I have three of them. What I don't support is abusing the political process to turn voluntary charitable giving into mandated taxation and taking the wonderful aims of philanthropy and politicizing them.

The two charitable agencies that gathered these petition signatures and are supporting this tax do great work for kids. Those two agencies, Synergy Services and Beacon Mental Health, are also going to benefit from this tax, and will almost certainly seek grants from it. (Both agencies have received funding from the Jackson or Clay county children's services funds.) There is nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that these charities have no self-interest in this process.

The county board that will be created to distribute the funds to the various non-profits will likely have very little oversight, and that has been a real issue on boards like this before, especially in Lafayette County. The last thing Platte County-or any county-needs is another minor taxing body with limited oversight.

While I am not a doctor or counselor, I also think it is worth questioning the new assumption that more mental-health therapy is always good. Undoubtedly, many kids need mental-health services and some kids in Platte County would benefit from these expanded programs. But Abigail Shrier's bestselling book, Bad Therapy, details some of the pitfalls of this approach. From a Commentary review of the book:

"With unprecedented help from mental health experts, we have raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record," Shrier writes. Moreover, "as treatments for anxiety and depression have become more sophisticated and more readily available, adolescent anxiety and depression have ballooned."

This tax vote may seem like an easy "yes" vote in Platte County. I hope the voters think long and hard about it first.