To ask the county government to pay, you have to ask the people to "care"!

Before the merger of Taichung County and City, the financial situation of Taichung County was extremely poor. Due to the pressure of votes for the head of the county and city, after being elected or re-elected, even if the finances are difficult, they will continue to borrow money for construction as usual.

The Taichung County Audit Office pointed out in the 2008 final accounts audit report that the reasons for the deterioration of the county government's finances were: 1. The central balanced budget subsidized income was compiled for many years, the annual income was short, and the annual expenditure was not as numerically controlled. Among them, from 2004 to 2008 In 2010, the total short income reached more than 30.96 billion yuan. 2. There are still many cases of non-taxation and fines. In 2008, there were more than 220,000 cases, with an amount of more than 2.48 billion yuan. 3. The outstanding balance of public debt continues to increase, and the management of repayment needs to be improved. As of the final account date of 2008, the accumulative borrowed amount exceeded 41.939 billion yuan, and the accumulative amount of repayment exceeded 15.96 billion yuan.

"The central government's balanced budget subsidy income", to put it vernacularly, is that there is no such income at all. In order to balance the budget, this money is compiled, resulting in a continuous increase in short income. Huang Zhongsheng, the county governor at the time, admitted that it was indeed difficult to improve the debt problem, and he hoped that the merger of counties and cities would provide more sources of income and improve financial problems.

From 2002 to 2010, when I ran the Taichung County Government, the financial situation of the county government was getting worse year by year. The arrears ranged from contractors to project money, as small as meeting bento money, and even more than half a year in arrears. They operated bento shops on a small scale, and some refused to order bentos from the county government.

At that time, it took more than half a year or even a year to get the money after the county government’s contracted projects or labor services were completed. I remember that my husband and friend undertook a project of less than one million yuan from the county government. The payment was delayed for a long time, and it was difficult for the small business to turn around. I asked the Finance Bureau to urge the payment to get the money that should have been paid long ago.

Although Taichung County's debt has been eased after the merger of Taichung County and City, many county and city governments in Taiwan are generally poor in finance. Miaoli County, Hualien County, Taitung County, which are less developed industrial and commercial areas, have less tax revenue and can't make ends meet all year round, even if the fiscal revenue is revised According to the method of division of expenditure, the problem of local government fiscal deficit may still be difficult to solve.