But it certainly takes looking for a cloud on a sunny day when you can find an "economic problem" in 20 months worth of growth in sales taxes, including more than 10 percent in year-over-year results reported in May.

Allin says we could do better. He's exactly correct about that. There is never an instance in life or business when we could not do better than we are currently doing.

But make no mistake about it: Twenty months of growth isn't bad and the per capita sales tax figure that Allin cites as evidence of a problem is only one measure of success. How many of the nine cities cited (we don't know what the cities were) have had 20 months of straight growth? How many of them saw a 10 percent increase in April?