Do you remember how, when you were little, your mom would load up a spoon with some foul-tasting medicine, or some food you had found particularly untasty, like mashed peas or carrots, and then she'd buzz all around your face pretending it was an airplane looking for the airport, and just when you let your guard down and grinned at the silliness of what she was doing, your mouth would open just wide enough for the airplane to quickly glide inside your mouth and unload its yucky cargo?

Well, you've grown since then. Maybe you're trying the old airplane looking for the airport gambit yourself, with your kids. (And you don't even work for Delta!)

At the big Jan. 6 county commission meeting about the courthouse and jail expansion project, the county finance director, a respected accountant by profession, made a presentation about the financing of that project.

He compared what difference it would make in our taxes if the county used the traditional general obligation bonds we're all familiar with, or so-called public facilities authority revenue bonds, or certificates of participation, or the infamous SPLOST sales tax.

He explained that his figures were dependent upon numerous assumptions about interest rates, the growth of the local population and of the tax digest, etc. About the SPLOST, he stated that the figures he was presenting were based upon the assumption that 25 percent of the sales tax revenue would be from individuals who do not reside in Fayette county, although he himself thought this percentage was too high.

In a letter to the editor which The Citizen published on Oct. 27, 1999, I had carefully demonstrated how, with all the taxes paid by residents on non-shopping center items like cars, groceries and taxable items delivered to Fayette residents from outside the county, the sales tax now paid by visitors would barely come to 5 percent of all the local sales tax revenues. No one has ever dared try to disprove my figures: no honest person could ever succeed.

So why did the courthouse/jail financial presentation include the assumption that outsiders would pay 25 percent of our local sales tax?

I took up the issue with the county commission Chairman Harold Bost, and here's the answer I got. Compared with the alternatives, the SPLOST method of financing the project already looks undesirable when we assume that our county residents pay only 75 percent of the local sales tax. (On that, he's absolutely right.) Since some people entertain this idyllic idea that a lot of our tax is paid by “other people,” he saw no harm in humoring them with this little white lie. After all, he said, no one knows exactly how much of our sales tax outsiders pay.

But that's not the point. We know it's not 25 percent. It's at most 10 percent and most likely somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent, as I clearly showed. (And, by the way, counting out-of-county car tags in front of Wal-Mart is not the scientific way of telling.)

So why perpetuate this myth that outsiders pay so much of our tax? Is it to fool the public in case the commission finds another project later that it wants to finance with a sales tax? Is it to humor those who don't have enough sense to understand the simple math that shows how small a percentage it is? Is it out of sympathy for sales tax proponents who earlier bandied about figures of 30 percent and even 35 percent to support school projects?

Mom meant well when she played the little airplane game to get us to take our medicine or eat our peas. While many voters have not grown up a whole lot and are prepared to open wide when presented with a little spoon feeding from the politicians, it still is a bad idea to engage in deception of the type I am reporting here. Even if well meaning.

One has to wonder now what other assumptions in the Jan. 6 financial presentation might be doubted. The best financing seems to be from options that do not require a vote of the people. Could some of the assumptions behind the figures that show that have been slanted toward that result, to avoid a vote?

That's the price you pay for not being strictly on the up and up. People start doubting everything else you do. Mom could be loading some delicious ice cream upon that spoon, but would I still open my mouth?

Even if the financing method the county commission eventually concludes is the best does not require a vote of the people, the commissioners could still ask the voters their opinion through a non-binding referendum on March 7, when we have our presidential primary, or on July 18, date of the general primary.

After all, recent past elections have polled the voters on other issues, and the boss in all of this (in case anybody forgets) is the people. Anyone who does not fear the people would be glad to put such issues on the ballot, and a favorable vote could settle the recall issue, the location issue, and the financing issue in one fell swoop.

When politicians truly earn the trust of the people, they generally receive it. Why not work to earn it, and why not trust the voters in return?

Claude Y. Paquin
Fayette County
ypaquin@msn.com

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