PrepTest 80, Section 2, Question 4
Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received approval to collect an additional charge on water bills and to use that additional revenue to build a dam. A member of the legislature has proposed not building the dam but instead spending the extra money from water bills to build new roads. That proposal is unacceptable.
Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received approval to collect an additional charge on water bills and to use that additional revenue to build a dam. A member of the legislature has proposed not building the dam but instead spending the extra money from water bills to build new roads. That proposal is unacceptable.
Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received approval to collect an additional charge on water bills and to use that additional revenue to build a dam. A member of the legislature has proposed not building the dam but instead spending the extra money from water bills to build new roads. That proposal is unacceptable.
Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received approval to collect an additional charge on water bills and to use that additional revenue to build a dam. A member of the legislature has proposed not building the dam but instead spending the extra money from water bills to build new roads. That proposal is unacceptable.
Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the columnist's judgment that the legislator's proposal is unacceptable?
Customers of a utility have a right to know how the money they pay to the utility will be used.
Money designated for projects that benefit an entire community should not be used for projects that benefit only some members of a community.
An additional charge on water bills should not be used to fund a project that most of the utility's customers disapprove of.
An additional charge on water bills should not be imposed unless it is approved by the legislature.
A water utility should not collect an additional charge unless the money collected is used for water-related expenditures.
Explanations
A columnist reports that the government-owned water utility is going to up-charge water bills under the auspices of building a dam. But, there's a proposal in the legislature to build roads instead of a dam using the new up-charge revenues. The columnist then concludes that such a proposal is unacceptable.
It's not the craziest idea in the world to divert tax revenues from one public good to another. So what makes this proposal objectionable to our columnist?
This turns out to be a Principle question. We're asked to assess each answer choice as if it was true and determine if it justifies our columnist's rejection of the dam-to-roads legislative proposal.
I'm predicting something like, "Government-owned entities should only use revenues for services within their purview." That is, if you're the water company, spend the money you collect on water-related things.
Let's see.
Nah. If it's valid that we deserve to know where the money's spent, then why would it matter if revenues are redirected from the dam to roads?
No. I have no way of knowing who does or doesn't benefit from the dam project—or the proposed roads, for that matter.
Nah, this is a trap. We don't know whether the utility's customers approve or disapprove of the roads. Heck, I'm willing to grant that they all want the roads. That doesn't help justify the columnist's argument that the road proposal is unacceptable.
No, to choose this, we'd need the passage to tell us that the legislature had not approved the proposal. We don't know for sure one way or the other, so we can't pick this.
Finally, yes. And very close to my prediction. If this is valid, then the proposal to build roads instead of a dam is indeed unacceptable—because we'd be building something unrelated to water services.
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