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(Drew Johnson is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance)  Local governments across America own and operate a ridiculous array of recreational venues at the expense of taxpayers. Golf courses, waterparks, concert venues, museums and movie theaters are frequently purchased or built on the taxpayers’ dime and run (poorly) by government bureaucrats, resulting in billions of wasted tax dollars every year.  But only one local government – Westchester County, New York – is careless enough with taxpayers’ hard-earned money to waste it on a failing amusement park.  Playland, located in the Westchester County shorefront community of Rye, is scheduled to open for its 2012 season this Saturday, May 12. The 84-year-old amusement park, as it turns out, is not very amusing to the county taxpayers who have to shell out seven-figure subsidies every year to keep the park in business.  In 2011 alone, bailing out the insolvent park cost county taxpayers $3.4 million.