Wednesday, August 28, 2002
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Wednesday, August 28, 2002 |
| What politicians
won't say about local taxes
It may seem that the elections are over, but they aren't. If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, eternal vigilance about taxes is the price of freedom from oppressive taxes. Let's talk about taxes. This may slip under the radar in some quarters, but our brethren in Clayton County have finally seen the light about SPLOST. On Aug. 20, they voted a SPLOST down. The vote was 58 percent against. Picture, if you will, two citizens who are sitting in two side-by-side cubicles at a car dealer in the Southlake Mall area. One is from Fayette County, the other from Clayton County. They both buy the same identical type of car. But the Clayton County resident pays $500 more for his car. Why? Because of SPLOST, of course. With a 2 percent SPLOST you pay $500 more for a $25,000 car. Who's calling that a penny tax? Coming back here to Fayette County, we note that not a single county commission candidate dared talk about our LOST, or local option sales tax, and its distribution among our citizens. Not one. That's probably because not a single one of them is conservative enough, and daring enough, to suggest we scrap it. (By the way, Cobb County does not have a LOST.) We'll have to see how their current negotiations to divide the pie with the cities end up. Notice how quiet everyone is about this. Which brings us to Governor Roy Barnes, and the forthcoming fall election for governor. The media now tell us that Barnes favors putting a 5 percent cap on annual property reassessments. Of course, the Republicans claim they were first to think of this and to propose assessment caps. The Republicans who proposed that had the wrong idea, and it does not make it any smarter for the Democrats to adopt it. If assessments are held down, the millage rate will go up and there will be no decrease in taxes. So who are they kidding? The whole system is unworkable, and to the extent it may cause two adjoining property owners to pay different taxes on properties of equal value it violates the equal protection clause in our federal and state constitutions. Let me tell you who they are kidding. They are probably kidding the 1,210 lost souls in our own Fayette County who, on Aug. 20, cast their vote in the Democratic primary for Public Service Commission candidate Mac Barber. The man got 48 percent of the Fayette votes cast in that primary. Why do I consider them lost souls? Because Mac Barber had been disqualified by the Georgia Supreme Court as ineligible to run for the PSC office he was listed for he lived in the wrong place and there was a large printed notice on the desk of precinct workers warning the voters that the ballots had been printed too early to remove his name and that any vote cast for him would not count. But, 1,210 people from Fayette County voted for him anyway. Republicans have lately been making noises about cutting taxes for senior citizens, thinking that will buy them votes. It's true that sooner or later we all get old, and few normal people, of any age, enjoy paying taxes. But just like being old does not necessarily mean being poor, getting older does not mean getting stupider either. Our senior citizens who are well off do not mind paying their fair share of taxes, though they hate to see money being wasted and they can't stand patronizing politicians. Most of the promises about taxes are not meant to be kept, or are impossible to keep. Sometimes there's just an exchange of taxes, equivalent to jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Like switching from property taxes to sales taxes. If politicians would only remember that we vote for them because there's nobody else better on the ballot, they might be more humble, and make fewer foolish promises. Especially about taxes. Claude Y. Paquin Fayetteville cypaquin@msn.com
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