Or tax hike for schools?
You need to understand what is behind this “news” that the Charlotte Chamber will help flog a quarter-cent hike in the sales tax past the public next year.
Recall a little blurb the other day that the League of Women Voters and the Pam Grundy Coalition for Pam Grundy are certain “poor” schools in CMS need more money. Further recall, as The Rhino Times and virtually no one else has reported, the big CMS bond spending spree — $195 million approved the other night — virtually guarantees a property tax hike.
Now if we have to raise property taxes just to build new schools, where do we get the money for the “poor” CMS schools? Well, funny you should ask.
The land transfer tax remains the Holy Grail of alternative revenue for big spenders as it would raise about $100 million a year. Backers also fantasize that only “rich” developers really pay the tax. Yet voters across North Carolina rejected the tax in November in county after county as they correctly see it as a tax on home ownership — and property.
Parallel to this transfer tax-schools track is the quarter-cent-roads track. The quarter-cent would only raise $35 million a year and, contrary to the chatter, could not be “earmarked” for roads — certainly not with the limitations the half-cent for transit imposes. Yet the Chamber realized this year that David Hartgen really is right — Charlotte is heading for gridlock without additional funding for roads. We also have the experience of the half-cent vote which tells us that the public wants to support efforts to reduce congestion — even largely symbolic ones like light rail projects.
The race is now on to get one or the other of these tracks in front of the County Commission as the tax hike for 2008. Pay no attention to the notion that the commission is worried about the electoral impact of a tax on the ballot. The entire county commission lobby is hard at work on any fears with the argument that counties need and deserve more revenue.
In addition, Parks Helms is showing his age by fretting in public about the county taking over traditional state responsibilities like roads. The message — and law — coming out of Raleigh this year indicated quite clearly that all the old rules are being tossed out. The old budget rules Helms operated under are being phased out.
Meanwhile — at the same moment — we have the announcement of a North Meck transportation “task force” chock full of Chamber-friendly officials and ex-officials. What do you bet that one of the “solutions” they come up with is a quarter-cent sales tax hike for roads? I’ll bet five quatloos on the newcomer.
More to the point, we just had a 70-30 outcome arguing that a half-cent sales tax will fight congestion and keep property taxes down — a quarter-cent argued on the same grounds must seem like a slam dunk to the tax-and-spenders.
For these reasons I think the quarter cent-roads track will win out, but not without a lot of noise about putting both on the ballot and letting voters “choose.”
Of course, a real choice would be to cut $35 million in wasteful corporate welfare spending from the city and county budgets and use that to build roads. Funny, I doubt that will be an option.
