April 21, 2013

Click here to view and here to listen to Michael Lowrey discussing this report.

RALEIGH — Local taxes and fees in Asheville totaled about $2,066 per resident in the 2011 budget year, ranking the city No. 7 out of North Carolina’s largest ranked cities, according to a new John Locke Foundation report. Asheville ranked No. 4 in 2010.

Asheville trailed Mooresville, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Wilmington, Durham, and Monroe in the rankings of combined city and county costs per person. The list features 34 municipalities with at least 25,000 residents. Jacksonville, Indian Trail, Thomasville, Asheboro, and Goldsboro ranked lowest among the larger cities.

Among slightly smaller municipalities, some Western North Carolina communities had relatively high local government costs per resident. Brevard ($1,992 per person) ranked No. 9, Waynesville ($1,981) No. 11, and Black Mountain ($1,910) No. 13 among the 92 ranked municipalities with populations between 5,000 and 24,999 people.

Forest City ($1,223), Marion ($1,197), and Mills River ($1,057) ranked among the bottom 25 percent of the ranked cities of that size. Other WNC communities in the same population category had local revenues per person that ranked near the average for their population group. That list includes Hendersonville ($1,720), Fletcher ($1,503), Woodfin ($1,430), and Morganton ($1,392).

Lake Lure ($3,602), Biltmore Forest ($3,410), Maggie Valley ($3,052), Weaverville ($2,314), Franklin ($2,027), Sylva ($1,990), Canton ($1,932), and Columbus ($1,761) all earned spots among the top 40 in the list of 180 ranked municipalities with populations of 1,000 to 4,999 residents.

Turning to county rankings, Macon County ranked No. 8 among the 100 counties in 2011, with taxes and fees taking up 5.43 percent of personal income. Buncombe County (4.75 percent) ranked No. 22, and Transylvania (4.73 percent) No. 23.

On the other end of the spectrum, six WNC counties ranked among the N.C. counties with the lowest tax and fee burdens per person. They were Henderson (3.45 percent), McDowell (3.40 percent), Burke (3.30 percent), Madison (3.29 percent), Swain (3.28 percent), and Polk (3.09 percent).

Other WNC counties had rates closer to the state median of 4.15 percent. They include Graham (4.70 percent), Haywood (4.50 percent), Jackson (4.18 percent), Yancey (4.15 percent), Mitchell (3.98 percent), Rutherford (3.84 percent), and Clay (3.78 percent). Cherokee County was unranked because of incomplete data.

By The Numbers: What Government Costs in North Carolina Cities and Counties FY 2011 is the 15th such report published by the John Locke Foundation. Lowrey used the most recent data available from the State Treasurer, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Bureau of Economic Analysis to construct rankings of local government cost on a per-person basis. For counties, he also constructed rankings on a share-of-income basis.

Lowrey continues to highlight a continuing problem that helps skew data. Four counties and nearly 40 municipalities missed state deadlines to file their State Treasurer’s Annual Financial Information Report.

“Whether those local governments filed the statements after the deadline or not, the information still is not available from the treasurer’s office,” Lowrey explained. “Without those reports, By The Numbers cannot include local tax burdens for those communities. Complete reporting would result in a somewhat higher combined county municipal median tax burden.”

Lowrey also repeated his annual warning against comparing the relatively high per-capita tax numbers in resort communities to those in other N.C. cities. Communities with larger numbers of second homes and resorts — combined with small year-round populations — will see larger per-capita tax burden figures, he said.

Among the 10 most populous counties, Durham (5.86 percent), Mecklenburg (5.31 percent), Guilford (5.19 percent), New Hanover (5.12 percent), and Buncombe (4.75 percent) ranked among the top 25 N.C. counties in average cost of local government. Wake (4.60 percent), Gaston (4.56 percent), Forsyth (4.56 percent), and Union (4.22 percent) ranked near the middle of the pack. Cumberland (3.22 percent) ranked No. 85 of the 96 ranked counties.

North Carolina collected $21.9 billion in state tax and fee revenues from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011. That’s 6.3 percent of state residents’ personal income. Local governments collected an additional $15.2 billion in property, sales, and other taxes and fees. That’s another 4.4 percent of personal income.

“Combined, they represent a state and local tax and fee burden of 10.7 percent,” Lowrey said. “Federal collections raise the total tax burden on North Carolinians to approximately 27.3 percent of personal income, on average.”

Lowrey stresses that a high cost-of-government ranking in the By The Numbers report does not equal a judgment that a city or county is governed poorly.

“By The Numbers is a tool that represents factual data only, without editorial comment or bias,” Lowrey said. “The best way to compare your city or county to others is to find municipalities or counties of similar size and demographics.”

“This report helps taxpayers evaluate whether the services they receive from local government merit what they are paying for them,” he added. “We hope taxpayers will continue to ask about the proper role of local government and its relationship to the state. It’s important to keep these discussions alive and to ensure our local leaders remain accountable to taxpayers.”

The John Locke Foundation Policy Report, “By The Numbers: What Government Costs in North Carolina Cities and Counties FY 2011,” is available at the JLF website. For more information, please contact Michael Lowrey at (704) 569-4269 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview, contact Mitch Kokai at (919) 306-8736 or [email protected].