You don’t have to attend a Tea Party, tune to talk radio or peruse the Republican party platform to hear people complain about taxes or encroaching government. There is anger — or at least resentment — among many taxpayers, a cynical sense that social services are provided primarily to the un-deserving and that government provides little value to ordinary people.

It was quite different when our forefathers returned from World War II. The nation’s marginal income tax was up at 91%, a rate that prevailed into the 1960’s. In those years people were still grateful that the federal government had put them to work during the Great Depression and then protected them against Hitler and Hirohito. After the war, it was federal money that sent veterans to college, that enabled young people to finance their first homes or start a business. Those with wealth paid their taxes as though they were dues.

In 1952, Maine passed a sales tax, in 1969 an income tax, and in 1973 a statewide property tax to support education. But the tide began to turn when the statewide property tax was overturned by people’s initiative in 1977. In the decades since, hostility toward taxes, both in Maine and elsewhere, has continued to evolve. Citizen petitions have proliferated in California, Colorado, and other states as well as Maine.

Meanwhile, public employees and teachers have circled their wagons and grown defensive. They have protected their pensions with constitutional amendments, enhanced their entitlements through collective bargaining, forced their supervisors to value longevity over merit, and insulated themselves from job loss through bumping and grievance rights.

To restore confidence in what government does, our public servants must open up and render themselves accountable for results. Taxpayers will no longer pay on faith. They want to see what they are buying.

Unfortunately, state government is ill-equipped to measure what taxpayers want to count. Bureaucrats too often measure success by the shear numbers of people they are serving. The more people receiving social services or the more in prison, then the more important are the jobs of those who administer those public services.

But the taxpayer wants to see public jobs diminish in scope, if at all possible. They want progress. They expect to see fewer people dependent on public support, fewer on welfare, less crime committed and fewer recidivists returning to Corrections. If public administrators do their jobs well, they should see their jobs shrink. Unfortunately, no one in government gets paid to make his own job less significant. The economic incentives of state service run contrary to the interests of taxpayers.

The challenge of public leadership is to pose the right questions on behalf of taxpayers, to demand the answers the public needs and, most importantly, to create new ways to reward public servants who succeed in diminishing the resources required to do their jobs and the scope of their own departments.