In need of a hook
If the County Commissioners Association wants to swing lawmakers to their cause, they need to tie tax reform to something totally unrelated. How about restoring the black fly spraying program? That’s a blood-biting topic of late. Or bailing out Pittsburgh and Philadelphia’s bus systems? Everyone else is tying that to something else. Wait, we’ve got it. Gambling expansion. That’s a natural tie in, or at least it was a good enough fix for the schools. As it stands now, the county commissioners are asking for something far too simple. Listen in at their Capitol rally this week. All they want is for lawmakers to lift restrictions that leave them little revenue generating capabilities other than hitting up property owners. Since property taxes make up on average 97 percent of counties’ budgets, it’s the only well to tap when expenses rise or deficits mount. Fayette property owners will soon receive tax bills 60 percent higher than last year. Surely, there might be a better way to fund county services. The commissioners propose letting taxpayers decide whether they’d prefer paying 1 percent more in sales tax or one-half to 1 percent in income taxes instead of property taxes.
This is way too straightforward to ever make it to a vote in Harrisburg. It must be muddied up a bit in the process. Just look at what lawmakers did to the schools. They wanted much the same thing as the commissioners. So did property owners. The issue was hot; school tax reform was all the rage.
Sensible solutions were advanced until the idea hit Harrisburg around the same time that the gaming industry pushed hard for slot machines at the racetracks. Somehow or the other, the two were married. The offspring of that legislation is this: gambling was expanded well beyond the race tracks; pet projects that have little to do with much except they were bargained for votes gained funding, and the schools, well, let’s just call them and property owners the forgotten stepchildren. Sure they can have a seat at the table and have a slice of the gaming revenue, but they will never know year to year how much will be carved out for the schools to share. If people don’t gamble the way lawmakers bank that they will, the schools will get a skimpy piece of the pie and lose the ability to generate local taxes.
We mention all this again, not only because we are still suffering from indigestion, but as a cautionary tale to the county commissioners association. Be careful what you ask for.