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The metro area's cultural facilities tax -- a sales tax of one cent on every $10 to support libraries, museums, zoo, etc. -- comes up for a vote later this year.
No sane person likes taxes, but those things don't run for free, and a sales tax seems like a fair way to finance them. Those facilities are a major reason for us rubes to visit the metropolis, and a sales tax means that those of us who enjoy the cultural facilities help pay for them.
However, Douglas Bruce has objected to the ballot wording.
Even though the tax rate will not change, he argued that
it must be presented to the public as a tax
increase,
rather than a continuation of an existing
tax.
His argument was that you'd have more money in your pocket if the tax did not continue, so therefore its continuation represents an increase in the tax rate and must be so advertised.
That may sound somewhat logical, but try to apply it elsewhere.
Did you put a quarter in a machine this morning to get The Denver Post? That's what the paper cost when you bought it yesterday, so it's hard to imagine that today's quarter represents any sort of price increase.
But according to the logic of Douglas Bruce, it is indeed a price increase. After all, you've got 25 fewer cents in your pocket than if you hadn't bought the paper.
In fact, if the Post had today reduced its cover price
to a dime, by Brucean Logic this would still represent a
price increase.
Somebody else got 10 cents that
wouldn't have otherwise gone there, and so that transaction
must represent a price increase.
The general intent of Amendment One -- that we should grant our informed consent every time the government reaches for our wallets -- is more than commendable, and most cities and counties have adapted to it fairly well, despite all the anguished complaint and hand-wringing after it passed.
But it has produced some odd consequences. Chaffee County, for instance, had accumulated some reserve capital so that if a road grader or dump truck died in service, it could be replaced right away.
But under Amendment One, that money had to be refunded unless the county spent it. Thus the county bought a lot of new equipment -- equipment it would need someday, but not necessarily right away -- so that our roads can still get plowed after a snowstorm. Without Amendment One, the county could have replaced the old equipment as necessary, rather than all at once.
Of course, it's fairly easy for local taxpayers to keep
track of a small government and to raise hell if it's
wasting money. That often doesn't hold in more populous
areas, where governments are bigger and more remote from
the public, and yet Amendment One inflicts a one size
fits all
process throughout the state.
Another consequence is that we see Doug Bruce flitting around the state, filing lawsuits, chastising public officials and defining various arcane provisions of Amendment One.
Then he can argue, with a straight face, that a
continuation of an existing levy at precisely the same rate
represents a tax increase.
Why do we need lawyers to
muddle and invert our Official English when we've got Doug
Bruce?
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