In Raleigh, city council members are using the proposed $225 million Public Safety building to justify a property tax increase. Justifying a tax increase by targeting funds to an essential city service is a variation on the “Washington Monument” technique. Phoenix city council members are much more bold. They threaten to cut the number police officers and firefighters in order to frighten the public into accepting a two-cent tax increase on groceries.
The Americans for Prosperity chapter in Arizona reports the political trick.
A majority on the Phoenix City Council just voted to put a TWO-CENT TAX ON GROCERIES (in the middle of a recession). The Arizona Republic?s story repeated city propaganda, saying that the council was ?desperate to save police, fire and other city jobs.? But the truth is that the City does NOT need to cut police and fire to balance its budget. It needs to cut the ?other city jobs,? eliminate non-essential services, and use public-private partnerships to operate and maintain assets such as city parks.
If you are the average Phoenix taxpayer, the City is going to tax your groceries to support city employees who make a LOT more than you do. Councilman Sal DiCiccio (who voted against the tax hike) reports that ?the average cost for all city employees is $100,000, including all benefits. That includes all employees–clerks to managers.? DiCiccio points out that the average private sector total compensation in the Phoenix-Mesa area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is $54,100?which is about half the average for City of Phoenix employees. ?For an enterprise the size of Phoenix,? DiCiccio concludes, ?with about 14,000 workers, that?s simply unsustainable, which is why we need to look to the private sector to perform some functions less expensively.?
It would be great if the Raleigh city council had a councilman like Sal DiCiccio to blow the whistle on Raleigh’s version of this dirty political trick.
