Local Option Taxes...

Lot's of rumblings around the Capital Annex these days regarding Local Option Taxes for targeted transportation and mass transit needs. We've got a couple of bills floating around that I suspect are or will be heard soon. (You can track or find bills up for adoption here)

I've listened to quite a number of folks about their desire to enable a community to tax themselves to fund infrastructure that the majority of the community feels are needed. I tend to agree with that, however, we need to ensure some pretty stiff sideboards are in place for spending these local community taxes and for the protection of the folks that will be paying them.

Currently, the taxes that are being focused on are local taxes to improve roads and public transportation. I've asked everyone that seems to support this tax what their incentive is for such a tax. By far the most consistent answer is "because our local transportation infrastructure needs fixed and we can do that with a local tax".

I love Idahoans, we don't hesitate to step up and take on issues that just need fixing, but in this instance, I think our focus is short sighted.

We currently provide tax Dollars to the Idaho Department of Transportation through our fuel taxes, registrations and a number of other revenue means that are to be focused on our transportation infrastructure. I've described the Highway Distribution fund in other blogs, and it's this fund that is currently the funding source that is to be used to fix those problems that we all see everyday.

If you were running a company that had a department that was "under performing, not meeting their goals" would you be better off still providing funds for that department while starting another department to fix the problems of the first couldn't seem to handle? Of course not, you would first focus on the under performing department and find the roadblocks keeping that team from meeting their goals.

We have a department that is charged with constructing, managing and maintaining our public transportation systems in Idaho. From airports to highways, ports to public mass transit systems... shouldn't our focus be on the team charged to spend our tax money today on the issues that are of most interest to us? Ensure they are as effiecient as possible before we look at increasing tax Dollars to be spent by that department?

If we decide to go down the road to tax ourselves with a Local Option tax to "fix our roadways or improve our public transportation systems", were do you think that new tax money will go? It will go to the same folks that are currently charged with that task now... what's the real gain?

Putting a band aid on a broken arm will not heal the arm, it will just make you feel better that there is at least something there... the arm is still broken, it will heal, but never be as good as it was. Throwing more tax Dollars at a system that is not efficiently spending those Dollars will do nothing more than continue to empty our pockets while still not making effective use of our hard earned money.

ITD is the third largest department in the state with a huge task of managing all of our transportation needs... the laws governing/restricting how they do that (legislative), policies directing the department (executive) and leadership and management of how they address the issues (The Commission) all need some "tweaking" to ensure our Department can be focused on the needs of the citizens of the State.

One can't blame the department or the legislature or the executive branch as the root cause of our problems, but all of us are part of the roadblocks to getting the department operating at an efficiency where we would not need more tax dollars to allow them to meet the goals that we have set for them. We are so focused at being reactionary to the lack of funding to meet required demands, we are not being proactive in looking at other ways to meet those demands.

I have yet to see a tax in our great State go away once it's enabled. It sure seems to be easier for our government to increase taxes than it is to ensure government is effeciently spending those Dollars in the first place... our first reactions seem to be to throw more money at the problems and hope they go away.

We have a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget at the State level, how would this work with a local taxing district managed by a non-elected board? Who would hold them accountable for the use of the people's money? Shouldn't we focus on how our money is spent today before we just assume throwing more money at an issue will solve our problems and raise more taxes?

Sideboards on Local Option taxes are extremely important if we are going to use them... using them as a band aid covering up larger issues, in my opinion, would we way outside any sideboards we could set.

Your thoughts?