Okay, now. The tax thing.

As I mentioned yesterday, Sugarmama sent me an e-mail she received from a very earnest opponent of Gubnah Bob Riley’s tax plan (known around these parts at Amendment One—The End of The World; or, Amendment One—The Savior of All Mankind) and she asked my opinion on its contents.

I let loose with a long-winded, point-by-point dissection of it and came to the conclusion that I still was undecided about the whole mess. She did suggest that I should post it for all of you fellow Cotton Staters to look at, and I figured I would. But then I found out that in my latest round of asking Chet the E-Mail Boy to take out the trash, I forgot to tell him to save that particular exchange. D’oh.

SO, rather than try to reconstruct the major points of SM’s original post and what I had to say about them, I’ll just launch into this little diatribe.

Before we get there, though, the backstory of the matter is that Alabama has a history of financial messes, in large part due to two things—an outdated Constitution which has been used by timber and mineral resource owners to keep property taxes low (and politicians in their thrall), and the resulting reliance by the state and by local governments on income taxes and on sales taxes to fund services.

Now, no one wants to have to pay taxes. BUT, if we want to provide ourselves with services such as education and police protection, it has to be done.

The bad thing about taxes on anything other than property (aside from the regressive nature of sales and use taxes) is that they can be very volatile—when the economy’s good, everybody’s happy, but if people ratchet down their buying, sales tax revenue likewise takes a hit. If you’re not relying on it to provide what you think are essential services, that’s not quite so bad, but when it is supposed to be going for running the schools and keeping State Troopers on the road, it’s pretty bad.

Especially if you’re a politician.

The pattern over the past few years for overcoming revenue shortfalls is one we like to call “proration”, in which money budgeted for disbursement is prorated by whatever percentage it is as a part of the state budget and by whatever the expected budget shortfall is. The Goat Hill Goobs get to fight amongst themselves so as to adjust the percentages a point or two one way or the other and crow about how they fought for the [insert name of special interest group here] to make sure they got less than their fair share of the misery. And then they give themselves a hearty slap on the back.

It continues like this, because as you can suspect, someone benefits from our financial disarray. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who, but the campaign against Amendment One is heavily bankrolled by a few heavy hitters:

More than $490,000 combined from county chapters of the Alabama Farmers Federation, the state's largest farming organization, which has historically opposed property tax increases.

$250,000 each from Alfa Insurance, an arm of the Farmers Federation, and SouthTrust Bank, lead by SouthTrust Corp. CEO Wallace Malone, an outspoken opponent.

$200,000 from Slawson Manufacturing Co. Inc. and $100,000 from Southeast Wood Treating, both owned by former Riley cabinet member Guice Slawson of Montgomery.

$40,125 from Russell Land Inc., a real-estate development firm in Alexander City.

(To be fair, the groups promoting the adoption of Amendment One are thick with organizations which make their way in life by feeding at the public trough.)

Both sides in the debate are using the exact same scare tactics in their television and print ads—if it passes or if it fails, The Children™ will be irreparably harmed and will grow up to be ignorant savages, The Aged™ will be turned out on the street in their thin bathrobes to scrounge in garbage cans, Criminals™ will move in with you and kill you, and the best one of all, Montgomery Politicians™ [insert ominous music and images of cigar-smoking, short-armed fatties] will find a way to steal all the money.

Oh, whatever. As it stands, the state will be running a deficit if SOMETHING isn’t done. It means either cut services or raise taxes.

The problem with cutting services is that the people who are supposed to be served are the ones who will suffer—the bulky layers of school bureaucrats will continue to haul in their paychecks whether Tommy Bob gets to play football or not, and the marketing departments for the various non-profit entitlement pass-throughs will still manage to find enough money to buy their favorite senator a nice dinner or two, whether Suejeanne gets her free grocery money or not.

The problem with raising taxes is that while Tommy Bob will be happy to get books that are only two years old AND his team will all get new helmets, and while Suejeanne will get a 1.3% raise in her free grocery money AND learn how to type on one of them computer deals, a much greater percentage will now go to insure that Beady-Eyed Roger and Robber Barron and Semiliterate John and Smilin’ Seth will have enough walking-around money to hand out to their buddies.

Which means, no matter which way you vote, the Montgomery Politicians™ are going to get what they see as rightfully theirs.

Personally, I think Riley’s plan is a small baby step toward reform of a broken system; rather like methadone is a cure for heroin addiction.

There’s not much he could do. He ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility with an emphasis on cutting waste, which he found out could only take him so far. Since Democrats control both Houses and all other top elected posts, it was either wait for the Democrats to come up with something, or try to fire the first shot and maybe work things around to something that would be to his advantage. I think Riley intended this plan to be a good faith attempt to redistribute the tax load in a more equitable manner toward those who are better able to pay, and to a more stable source. As it stands, though, there is too much in it to hate for the folks who think ALL taxes are bad, and not enough to buy off the loyalty of those who might otherwise work to see it passed.

In all of the blabber, what no one seems to recall is that none of these things even had to be put up for a vote—the Legislature has the power to levy taxes on anything they want, in just about any way they see fit. Riley knew the only way these measures would even have a chance of passing were to bypass the Legislature and get the people to vote for it, and the Democrats were only too willing to let him go with it. The Democrats have nothing to lose by standing back and offering faint praise—if the measure passes, they will be rolling in cool mud and will waste no time in shouting about how it was through their efforts that they saved the state from sure ruin. If it fails, they can proudly crow that they knew Alabamians were too smart to fall for that evil Republican plan. And then they will pass their own tax measure. Without a vote. For The Children™. Or, alternately, we’ll go right back to proration.

It would be nice if those who hate this plan this would start working now on a counterproposal; but that’s not the way things work in real life.

It would be nice if those who are so dead set against Riley’s plan because it perpetuates and nourishes a train wreck of a state government would start working now on a way to fix or replace the system; but that’s not the way things work in real life.

It would be nice of those championing the plan would realize that good government is not simply finding enough money to throw around; but that’s not the way things work in real life.

It would be nice if both sides would shut up the boogey-man blithering and get down to business; BTNTWTWIRL.

You know what the weirdest thing of all is? I like living here. Go figure.
posted by Terry at 2:35:00 PM