Vision Tulsa, sheriff special election: BatesLine ballot card

Here are my recommended votes in the Tulsa County special election on April 5, 2016, for the unexpired term for Tulsa County Sheriff and county and municipal sales tax propositions. Links lead to more detailed information or earlier blog entries. (This entry may change as I decide to add more detail or discuss additional races. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.)

Printable one-page "cheat sheet" ballot card
Printable timeline of current and proposed changes to Tulsa city and county sales taxes

Print them, take it along to the polls, and pass it along to your friends, but please read the detail and click the links below.

Here's a synopsis of all the items on the ballot around Tulsa County today.

Podcasts from the Pat Campbell Show on 1170 KFAQ:

• March 30, 2016: Michael Bates of Citizens for a Better Vision on Vision Tulsa package
• March 21, 2016: George McFarlin of Citizens for a Better Vision on Vision Tulsa package
• March 9, 2016: Michael Bates and George McFarlin of Citizens for a Better Vision on Vision Tulsa package

And now here are my recommendations and rationale for each ballot item.

Tulsa County Sheriff, unexpired term: Republican Vic Regalado.

• This election will keep the sheriff's seat warm until the November election.
• I have some serious concerns about the appearance that straw donors were used to fund Regalado's primary campaign and about his choice to respond to those concerns by playing the race card.
• The Democrat nominee, Rex Berry, is a far-left, anti-gun rights, pro-abortion extremist who compares Tea Party Republicans to Saudi Arabian theocrats.
• Vote for Regalado today, support a better conservative candidate in the June primary for the full four-year term.

Sales tax propositions: General advice

• The sales taxes on the ballot are intended to replace the Vision 2025 0.6 cent sales tax which doesn't expire until December 31, 2016.
• If there's something in a package that you think is foolish or wasteful, if the rate is too high or the duration of the tax is too long for your liking (or permanent) vote NO, and then tell your elected officials why.
• Commissioners, councilors, and mayors will have plenty of time to propose better packages and bring them to a vote on the June primary, August runoff, or November general election ballots.

Tulsa County sales tax: NO.

• This is a 0.05%, 15-year sales tax.
• While most of the projects on Tulsa County's tentative list seem modest and reasonable, the list is not set in stone, and the tax is for 15 years with plans to borrow against future revenues.
• A tax no more than 5 years in duration, with a fixed set of basic infrastructure projects, and no advance revenue bond funding, would be worth considering, but this plan does not meet those criteria.

City of Tulsa, Prop. 1: NO.

• This is a permanent increase in the city's sales tax rate, earmarked to fund police, fire, and 911. The rate starts 0.16% and after July 1, 2021, permanently increases to 0.26%.
• This tax doesn't address the causes of runaway increases in police and fire department spending. The police and fire budget consumes all of the permanent 2% sales tax for operations, plus a little. (107% in Fiscal Year 2014).
• According to a 2014 report, "City of Tulsa Fiscal Constraints", "Since 1980, Police and Fire operating budgets have increased by 470%. Higher operating budgets have not translated into additional 'boots on the ground,' however. The number of Police and Fire personnel has only increased by 4% over that 34-year span."
• The police and fire budget, adjusted for inflation has doubled since 1980. We need an investigation and explanation for this dramatic increase in cost without a corresponding increase in service.
• Shrugging our shoulders and throwing more money at the problem only means a future sales tax increase a few years down the road.
• A temporary tax to tide us over while we figure out the causes of our fiscal hemorrhage might be acceptable, but not a permanent increase is not.

City of Tulsa, Prop. 2: NO.

• This is a permanent increase in the city's sales tax rate by 0.085 cents on the dollar, earmarked to fund street maintenance and public transit.
• While many projects have been informally promised for this permanent tax, for some reason, none of them were written into the Brown Ordinance that controls spending for the tax.
• Nor does the ordinance dictate how the money will be split between street maintenance, public transit operations, and public transit rolling stock and infrastructure.
• In the age of Uber and Lyft, it seems backwards-thinking to commit a permanent tax to an old-fashioned bus system with fixed routes, long waits, limited hours of operation, one-size-fits-all vehicles, and unionized public employees as drivers. A flexible, data-driven, private-sector approach could meet the public transit needs of Tulsa citizens with lower cost and greater comfort and convenience.
• A temporary tax, targeted to specific spending plans, and a plan to research innovative new approaches to transit would be worth voting for; this vaguely defined permanent tax is not.

City of Tulsa, Prop. 3: NO. This is the dam tax package.

• 15-year increase in the city's sales tax rate by 0.305 cents on the dollar for 4.5 years, up by a half-penny to 0.805 cents for 4 years, and back down to 0.305 cents for 6.5 more years.
• That half-penny bump for four years is just enough to pay for the low-water dams, and it means that we can't renew our traditional Third Penny sales tax for streets and other basic infrastructure when it expires in 2021 without raising the overall tax rate.
• $127 million will be spent on low-water dams in the Arkansas River, with the south Tulsa dam contingent on some vague sort of agreement with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation (which has not offered or committed any financial support) and the City of Jenks (the involvement of which is contingent on Tuesday's proposition in Jenks).
• Dams will disrupt habitat for the endangered bald eagle and other species.
• Dams will damage and deplete fisheries.
• Dams are for the sake of aesthetics, even though we have no protection in place against ugly, inappropriate riverfront development.
• We'd be building new low-water dams as many cities are removing them as hazards.

Beyond the dams, this package has numerous other wasteful and often ill-defined projects.

• $55 million for the convention center and arena (where we've already spent $228.5 million).


• $27.3 million for a corporate welfare deal-closing fund at the airport -- something we voted down in Vision2 in 2012.


• $30 million to be given away to the county for Expo Square for however they want to use it; one city councilor called it a bribe.


• $15 million for a national headquarters for Bicycle Motocross (BMX).


• $5,320,000 for Tulsa Community College, which is already lavishly funded through our property taxes.


• $9,400,000 for a 119,000 sq. ft. Air National Guard simulator building which may never have simulators in it.


• $10 million for teacher retention and attraction isn't enough to buy a daily cup of coffee for each teacher; the money is there to trick voters concerned about school funding to vote for the dams.

Suburban sales tax propositions: NO.

• Because these taxes are a minimum of 15-years duration, in some cases permanent, I recommend that voters say NO and ask their leaders for a maximum five-year, pay-as-you-go package with a very specific list of projects.
• Jenks voters should reject their sales tax because it includes funds for a low-water dam.
• Glenpool voters should be aware that passing all three propositions will increase their already-high tax rate by another 0.55 cents on the dollar. This growing suburb has plenty of new retail, and you'd think Glenpool should be able to fund increased public services from growing revenues without a tax increase.
• Sapulpa voters may not wish to fund city land acquisition and removal of historic Route 66 motels in the Turner Turnpike gateway area.
• Owasso and Collinsville voters should look closely at their lists of proposed projects and consider whether their growing cities could fund improvements without a higher city sales tax rate.

As I wrote back in January, before the City of Tulsa proposal was set in stone:

If I were a cynic, I might believe that the City Council had no interest in whether these projects were feasible or appropriately budgeted. I might believe, were I a cynic, that these items were included just to get a few more hundred voters to the polls in the mood to vote yes on everything.

The better path would be for the Council to whittle down the list and propose a shorter-term (five years, max), pay-as-you-go (no "advanced funding" line item for interest and bond fees) sales tax that funded only those items that were of general public benefit and had been thoroughly vetted for feasibility and an accurate estimate of cost.

The City Council and Mayor Bartlett didn't follow that better path, so we need to tell them NO and tell them to put together a better package for our consideration.

Published at 23:45 on Monday, April 4, 2016. Postdated to remain at the top of the blog until the polls close.