America’s local governments have a bad business model.

Back when I worked as an engineer, I did all kinds of projects that (sort of) made engineering sense, but made absolutely no financial sense. Since the financial health of the city wasn’t part of what I was being asked to consider—that was someone else’s job, or so I believed—I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. I believed that someone who knew more than me must have it figured out.

When I went back to graduate school for a planning degree and started working in that profession, I again found myself involved with projects that came nowhere near penciling out. And while the financial health of the city still wasn’t my charge, I was starting to question whether it was anyone’s.

I derailed a few projects—to the dismay of project boosters—simply by asking some basic questions: How much growth do we need to make this investment pay off? Is that even possible? Since it’s clearly not, how much ultimately is this going to raise everyone’s taxes?

Although a handful of projects died from sheer financial ridiculousness, most of the ones I was involved in moved forward. I worked with local government after local government that, even when they knew the project was guaranteed to be a financial loser, even when it was clear that there was no possible way of them ever coming out ahead, went ahead and did them anyway.

If you asked them, the local leaders who voted for such folly would say they were pro growth, pro jobs and pro community. Here’s the rub: So was I.