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Editorial: County borders and pots of cash

On the surface, the legislature's decision to upgrade the status of Taipei County to a special municipality is overdue, given its proximity to and degree of integration with Taipei City.

Taipei County, with nearly 4 million people, acts as a poor sibling of Taipei City, which receives a much larger amount of funding from the central government. The difference between the two is readily detected the moment the city-county border is crossed: Taipei County is dirtier and shabbier, with block after block of poor planning, narrower roads and apparently little maintenance.

Much of the responsibility for this situation lies with the decades-old system that elevated Taipei to a status more or less equivalent to that of a province -- and for a time directly administered by the Executive Yuan.

As the nation's wealth grew, the benefits of this wealth were distributed disproportionately to Taipei City -- and Kaohsiung City -- even though a good proportion of the people who generated this wealth lived elsewhere.

There was a time only a few years ago when much of Taipei County had a rural feel, but today the metropolis of Taipei expands in several directions with such density that the location of the border has become arbitrary.

The argument that has been advanced -- and it is a compelling one -- is that the residents of Taipei County are no less deserving of the funds that provide better services and better government, and indeed, that Taipei County in effect subsidizes Taipei City through its contribution to the local economy but with a lot less return.

One problem with the decision is that it adds a layer of complexity to an already crowded administrative structure. It also prompts people in other parts of the country to ask: "If Taipei County can, why can't we?"

Politicians from greater Taichung and Tainan already have their sights set on arrangements that would make them qualify and so increase their relatively tight budgets.

The result of all this will be a coalition of local politicians campaigning for border redistributions that will tip a merged county/city region over the population threshold of 1.25 million -- the magic number that allows an application for special municipality status.

Taken to the logical extreme, what densely populated Taiwan could end up with is somewhere near half the country defined as special municipalities -- which defeats the meaning of "special."

That leads to the final, and more troubling, question: How could the government justify the difference in spending between two groups of Taiwanese? Originally, the difference was explained in terms of the need to take special care of Taipei and Kaohsiung cities -- areas of key economic and security interest -- and leave the rest to the now defunct Taiwan Provincial Government.

The equally troubling answer may well be that politics is the sole reason, and that the distribution of resources to all Taiwanese may become less equitable over time, not more.
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