Most cities have “single-payer universal coverage” when it comes to garbage service, but Springfield is stuck with an old “individual mandate, fee-for-service” model that doesn’t work very well. The Houston administration and aldermen say they are working on ways to make the bad system a little bit better by putting garbage fees on utility bills. But that runs into the problem that tenants usually pay utilities and landlords are legally responsible for having garbage service. While we wait for the politicians to finally see that the government should pay for garbage pickup, here’s an idea for a no-cost interim measure: Publish the list of city addresses that don’t appear on any garbage hauler’s customer list. That would let neighborhood organizations go to work identifying the culprits, shame the city into enforcing the rules and let everyone know that the problem of no-service is bigger than city officials are letting on. –Fletcher Farrar, editor