Thursday, February 19, 2015

My C-J Column on Local Option Sales Tax


Sorry I forgot to link this earlier.  I am not a fan of the proposed local option sales tax. 

This will be an interesting vote in the Kentucky Senate to smoke out the RINOs, as it has done in the General Assembly.

There is no point in even controlling the Senate if Republicans are going to use their power to raise our taxes.   

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Thank you! Your C-J column letter was outstanding about the local option sales tax. I've tried to say something similar to all the Frankfort legislators but your letter was perfect! Thanks again!

Don Wrege said...

I read your CJ piece with interest. I'm a transplanted Louisville native, now living in ultra-liberal Boulder, CO. Let me give you a look at the future of this kind of incremental "local project" taxation.

For example, having nothing better to do with their time, some city staffers became enthralled with the idea sweeping the liberal new urbanist cities, to "liven up the Civic Center." Ostensibly to make mingling with the hordes of homeless in Central Park, they're going to spend upwards of 37 million dollars on "improvements" that are completely unnecessary. (The park is fine the way it is if only they'd shoo the bums out, but they won't, so they make it "nicer" thinking the bums will leave on their own. They won't.)

But even Boulder's citizens would balk at 37 million all at once, so they call the extra sales tax a "Pay As You Go" tax, beginning with just 8 million associated with the needless Civic Center project, and the rest on a laundry list of nice-to-haves like more lighting for paths up on campus.

Who could vote against more lighting for the campus kids?

So they pack the pick with a bunch of petunias and the voters add to a growing list of "just one cent more" taxes.

Where it ultimately leads is what is happening in unincorporated Boulder County where the county commissioners decided in the mid-90s – without bothering to tell the citizens – to stop using property taxes to maintain the roads. What in 1995 was 8% of overall expenditures was purposely shrunk to .08% as the roads began to degrade over time. Meanwhile our property taxes continued to go up.

The commissioners had decided, in secret, to divert the Road Funds for their pet projects like homeless shelters, "affordable housing," and bike paths (because automobiles are evil).

Now it's a huge problem, with 150 miles of crumbling roads the county says it has no responsibility to maintain, even though the counted owns those roads entirely. Guess what all three Democrat commissioners proposed? You guessed in: an additional tax. A new tax to pay for what our property taxes already paid for for many decades until they got the bright idea to steal it.

The citizens fought back and won the first round. The second lawsuit is in action now.

http://bocofirm.org/boco-firms-lawsuit-2---fix-our-roads.html

The moral of the story is this is a very slippery slope for taxpayers and tremendously attractive to tax-and-spend Democrats. They're boiling frogs. Don't be one.

Don Wrege
Boulder, CO

Anonymous said...

great explanation. Keep up the good work.