The Neverending Story

I was quite surprised to read the following article in the Seattle P-I about the City Council-proposed tax package. The tone of the article doesn't really "fit" with the general mentality in Seattle—a city that has never met a tax it didn't like.

Seattle politicians can't show you a price tag for the massive transportation measure they're pitching on the fall ballot.

But this much is clear: The unprecedented proposal could boost by as much as 34 percent how much the city collects from property owners — nearly six times what current law allows.

And it might be permanent — a first in Seattle for this type of tax increase.
...
City officials predict that over the lifetime of the 20-year package, the typical homeowner would see a tax-rate increase of 38 cents for every $1,000 of property value. For a $400,000 house, that would be more than $150 annually.

But that's only an estimate.

"It's an unprecedented levy in its size and duration," said City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck. "It's seriously lacking in public accountability and taxpayer accountability."
...
Activists, special interests and politicians often ask citizens to agree to temporary increases to pay for specific initiatives, such as affordable housing, school improvements and park construction.

This proposed levy has two noteworthy distinctions:

• It could last forever.

Most levy increases expire in about five to seven years, although voters sometimes approve extensions. After the measure expires, the city's tax base reverts to its previous level.

In this proposal, after six years of increases of as much as 5 percent a year, the levy would not roll back. It would continue to grow 1 percent per year for 14 years. The City Council has approved a resolution stating that it wants to return to lower levels after 20 years, essentially to today's level plus the annual 1 percent increase allowed by state law, compounded over 20 years.

But future councils are not bound by that resolution.

"That was obviously appealing to many of my colleagues and the mayor — not to me, though," said Steinbrueck, who unsuccessfully tried to get his peers to set an expiration date to the tax increase. "Aside from the commitment to an oversight group handpicked by the mayor and council you don't have the same kind of broad public accountability that comes with a six- or eight-year levy, where the public has an opportunity to evaluate the promises and the results over a reasonable period of time."

Hey, if the residents of Seattle want to saddle themselves with this kind of unending overbearing tax burden (on top of the RTID, Sound Transit, and the plethora of other tax programs that have their hands in the pot), I suppose they'll get what they deserve. I still haven't been convinced that all of these additional taxes are even necessary. Isn't basic transportation infrastructure upkeep supposed to be one of the primary functions of government? Shouldn't they be spending general funds on roads, and putting things like arts promotion "affordable housing," and the Mayor's chauffeur up for public votes?

Of course, it might just be me, but it also seems like all these excessive taxes aren't going to do much to help the Mayor's plan to increase the city's population 60% by 2040. But what do I know, right?

(Angela Galloway, Seattle P-I, 08.16.2006)