Opinion/Editorial

If It Ain’t Broke . . . (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
We voted “Yes” on “4 to Fix” in 2000. It’s five years later, and the county is fixed
by Michael Bates

Next Tuesday, Dec, 13, Tulsa County voters will consider four, five-year sales-tax propositions--together they amount to a 1/6^th cent sales tax to pay for $62 million in projects. The taxes would go into effect over nine months after the election, on October 1, 2006, when the current “4 to Fix the County” sales tax, also 1/6^th cent, expires. 

(Also on the ballot is a 50¢ per month per phone tax to fund Enhanced Wireless 911 service for the county.)

There are compelling reasons to turn down this new tax.

The county already has adequate funds available for essential capital improvements. Much of the new tax would go toward frills like a new golf cart barn, while higher-priority needs--public safety and infrastructure for river development--remain underfunded. The new tax would drain more money away from the City of Tulsa to subsidize the suburbs. 

Still, a recent poll shows the taxes are likely to be approved. I blame Impulse Buyers.

Any time a tax is proposed, there’s a range of reactions from “no new taxes” to “I never met a tax I didn’t like.” (The latter category includes World editorial page editor Ken Neal.) In between the two extremes, two positions stand out. There’s one group that will always vote for a tax as long as it’s paying for something non-evil. “A giant statue of a cute cuddly puppy--that sounds nice. That will really put Tulsa on the map. Why not? What’s $62 million dollars?”

Those are the Impulse Buyers. These are people who should use the no-candy checkout lanes to keep out of trouble.

The other group, call them the Prioritizers, will say, “That sounds nice, but is there something better or more important we could be doing with the money.” They’ll want to know if the spending package includes the highest priority items on the capital improvements list. Will the money pay for basic necessities or “nice to haves”?

Prioritizers will want to know how the government asking for the tax is spending the money it’s already receiving. Do necessities get funded first? Or are less important but more politically appealing projects getting funded first, so officials can sell us on higher taxes by threatening that necessities won’t be funded?

The really savvy Prioritizers realize that our combined sales tax rate (city, county, and state) is as high as it ought to be, especially in a state that taxes basic necessities like food, clothing, and over-the-counter medication. Raising the sales tax for one level of government means that it isn’t available for higher-priority spending by another level of government. And of course, raising the sales tax for any level of government means we taxpayers can’t spend that money (our money, after all) on our personal and family priorities.

Prioritizers are too often defamed as “knee-jerk naysayers,” but the people opposing “4 to Fix the County” supported the original “4 to Fix” vote in 2000. They just believe that under present circumstances, there are better uses for the money than what the Tulsa County Commissioners want to spend it on.

The original “4 to Fix the County” passed by a wide margin in 2000. At the time, the facilities at the Fairgrounds were in bad shape, and without raising the overall tax rate, we could renovate or rebuild those facilities, enabling us to retain and attract events that bring visitors to Tulsa from around the country. The same package included money for flood control, county roads, and county parks – $50 million in capital improvements.

It’s five years later, and the county is fixed. Expo Square is in beautiful shape, county parks have new facilities, and road and flood improvements are on their way to completion. 

If the original $50 million weren’t enough to fix the county, Vision 2025 included $91 million for the same types of projects. Add to that a $65 million surplus that Tulsa County officials estimate will be generated by the Vision 2025 sales tax. And the Tulsa County use tax, which paid for the first round of Fairgrounds renovations, would continue to bring in about $4 million a year. All told, that’s about $200 million already available for Tulsa County capital improvements over the next 10 years, even if we turn down the new “4 to Fix” tax.

County Commissioners could probably do even more with their current resources. In our column, “How Good An Ol’ Boy Are You?”, Oct. 20-26) we detailed their aversion to competitive bidding. In the case of the proposed south Tulsa toll bridge, their choice to do a deal with a group of county insiders, rather than seek bids, may have deprived the county of more than $600 million in future revenues. And last year the State Auditor identified serious flaws in how the county handles its money, flaws that led to county officials spending away a $6 million surplus without realizing where the money went.

The County Commissioners are saying that the new “4 to Fix the County” is just an extension of the same tax, but in fact it’s for a different set of projects, projects that aren’t as urgent or important as those that were approved in 2000. The list of projects, drafted in a hurry by the County Commissioners without any effort to gather public input, includes such questionably critical items as a new golf cart barn for LaFortune Park. The current barn, you see, can only hold 65 carts, and it would be awfully nice to have a barn big enough to hold 80. Also, the main entrance to the Expo Building at the Fairgrounds lacks “pizzazz,” and the new tax would pay to take care of that.

It was difficult to find a list of the specific projects the new tax would fund. Unlike Vision 2025, the ballot resolutions for the Dec. 13 sales tax vote don’t specify the projects to be funded. Unlike the City of Tulsa’s “third penny” for capital improvements, there is no ordinance which lists the projects, limits spending to those projects, and requires well-publicized hearings if any changes are made to the list. 

As I write this, there isn’t even an official website with a list of projects. The only detailed list I could find was on the website for Do the River First, a group that wants to defeat the Dec. 13 vote, so that we have the chance to allocate that money for improvements along the Arkansas River.  (You’ll find the list at http://www.dotheriverfirst.com/projects.html)

Some of the projects on the list are important, like $7.8 million for courthouse improvements and a new juvenile justice center, but that project could be funded by two years’ worth of county use tax, if only the county would prioritize how it spends what it already has.

Most of the roads projects are within the limits of one city or another, and there’s really no good reason to give the money to the county, just so they can give it back to us. In fact there’s a good reason not to do that: The City of Tulsa won’t get back nearly as much as it puts in. City of Tulsa sales will generate over $17 million of the roads portion of the tax, but only $8 million of it will come back to us to pay for roads in or on the boundaries of the City of Tulsa. City of Tulsa sales will generate over $10 million for parks, but only $4.5 million will come back for county parks within Tulsa. 

Sales in the City of Tulsa will generate more than $50 million of the revenues for the entire package. Let’s be generous and count toward Tulsa’s total the Expo Square projects (even though Expo Square is outside the city limits) and the courthouse and juvenile justice center improvements (even though they will benefit the entire county). Even then only $40 million of the $50 million generated by the City of Tulsa will come back to Tulsa. Tulsa is already seeing its share of retail sales shrinking as the suburbs grow. At a time when Tulsa doesn’t have the revenues to maintain and operate our own streets and parks, why should we donate another $10 million to fuel suburban sprawl?

There are better things to do with the money. If we vote “No” on Dec. 13, each of Tulsa County’s cities and towns could choose to raise city sales tax by the same amount to pay for its own priorities, while keeping the overall sales tax rate the same. Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock has proposed using that same 1/6^th cent as a city sales tax dedicated to public safety. Tulsa’s murder rate is twice the national average, and the overall violent crime rate is 1.83 times the national average. More cops would help Tulsa more than a bigger cart barn. 

What else could we do with the money? Attorney David McKinney says that instead of spreading a “thin, ineffective coat of money” around the whole county, we ought to focus our tax dollars on implementing the Arkansas River master plan. Voting no on Dec. 13 means that, instead of waiting yet another five years to fund river development, we could push County Commissioners to give us the chance to vote on a river-focused package sometime in 2006.

Whether you think public safety, river development, or more money in your own pocket is the highest priority, the only way we’ll be able to have a discussion about those priorities is if we vote “No” on Dec. 13.