We have two initiatives coming on the ballot in Huntington Beach. One to cut a utility tax that was imposed 30 years ago to build a city hall and a library. These are built and paid for yet the tax remains. The position of the initiative is for the city to sunset the tax and make their case for a new tax. Another is to cut the cable TV tax ($1.5 million) because it funds the city cable Tv channel which costs $500,000 per year. It only costs the County $300,000 to televise their meetings and proponents of the tax cut say the city shouldn't be involved with media productions essentially controlling limited air time for local access features.
Massachusett's Initiative a little more serious.
Of mostly local (Massachusetts) interest.
WIPE OUT THE INCOME TAX?
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 31, 2001
Today, taking the first step toward what could be the most momentous ballot fight
in Massachusetts history, a group of small-government activists led by two-time
Libertarian Party candidate Carla Howell will file an initiative petition to abolish the
state's personal income tax. If the attorney general approves the language of the
proposed law, and if the petitioners collect the necessary signatures from registered
voters, the measure will be on the state ballot in 2002.
Fasten your seat belts. We may be in for a wild ride.
Bay Staters are used to voting on tax changes. In 1990, they rejected Question 3,
which would have cut the individual income tax rate, newly hiked to 6.25 percent, back
to 5 percent. In 1994, they defeated Questions 6 and 7, which would have replaced the
state's uniform tax rate with graduated rates rising to 9.8 percent. They agreed in 1998
to stop taxing investment income more heavily than regular income. And last year, by a
59-41 landslide, they passed the tax cut they had disdained in 1990 and sent the income
tax rate rolling back to 5 percent.
Most of those initiatives inspired considerable debate. They were ardently defended
and vehemently denounced in every conceivable forum. But we will look back on those
campaigns as prissy tea parties next to the war that will erupt if this newest initiative
makes it to the ballot.
If Massachusetts voters get a chance to abolish the income tax, there will be a din the
likes of which this state has never known. Every special interest with its snout in the
public trough -- and every politician and media outlet that supports them -- will howl
with fury, warning that an end to the income tax will mean an end to civilization as we
know it. The schools will shut down, they will moan. The sick will die. The courts
will collapse. Bridges will buckle, the unemployed will go hungry, the T will grind to a
halt, and every city and town in the commonwealth will sink into fiscal chaos.
They will say, in short, that the loss of its income tax will leave Massachusetts
starved and disgraced. How can Carla Howell possibly defend *that?*
Howell is the articulate and telegenic Libertarian who challenged Ted Kennedy in the
US Senate race last year and drew 12 percent of the vote, nearly tying the Republican
candidate, who got 13 percent. It was a notable achievement for a 3d-party candidate,
especially one whose philosophy of minimal government flies in the face of everything
that liberal Taxachusetts is supposed to favor.
Still, 12 percent is only 12 percent. Massachusetts voters may have cut their taxes
last November and voted Republican in the last three gubernatorial elections, but it isn't
exactly obvious that they want to radically shrink state government. Howell and others
who advocate an end to the income tax will be fighting an uphill battle. Voters will be
skeptical. Opponents will be well-funded. Democratic politicians -- and
Republican ones, too -- will rush to defend the status quo. The media will trumpet the
horrors awaiting Massachusetts if the income tax goes by the boards. It won't be an
easy sell.
Even for those of us who consider taxation little better than legalized theft, there is
no denying that wiping out the income tax would take its toll on state government. In
2000, the income tax generated more than $9 billion for the treasury -- 57 percent of the
state's total tax revenue of $15.7 billion. It funded almost 41 percent of the state's $22
billion operating budget. Critics will demand to know how Massachusetts could
survive without it. Will Howell have an answer?
Of course she will.
For a start, she can point out that seven states already manage without an income tax:
Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. Two
others, New Hampshire and Tennessee, tax only dividends and interest. Beacon Hill
may be addicted to income-tax revenues, but addictions aren't healthy. And as
countless ex-smokers, ex-gamblers, and ex-drinkers can testify, it is a blessing to
overcome them.
No doubt Howell will make the point that state government spends so much money
because it has it, not because it needs it. The dollars gush in, so many in recent years
that the state literally hasn't been able to spend them fast enough: Even with a budget
racing far ahead of inflation, Beacon Hill keeps winding up with nine- and 10-figure
surpluses. And that doesn't count the billions stashed away, unused, in various rainy
day and insurance funds. Or the state's $7 billion share of the tobacco settlement.
Deleting the income tax from the state's fiscal calculations would not roll us back to
the 19th century. It would roll us back to 1991. Do the math: Subtract $9 billion of
income tax revenues from this year's $22 billion budget and you are left with $13
billion. That was roughly the size of the state's budget (in 1991 dollars) when Michael
Dukakis left office. Many things have been said of Dukakis, but no one ever accused
him of cutting government to the bone. At $13 billion, state government was big,
powerful, intrusive, and top-heavy with needless boards and bureaucrats. Restored to
$13 billion, it would still be far from Spartan.
But it will certainly be smaller. And that, say Howell and her fellow petitioners --
who are organized as the Committee for Small Government -- is the point.
"Making state government small will make people's lives better and happier," she
told me yesterday. "$9 billion less for the state means $9 billion more for voters to
spend on *their* priorities: their kids' education, their churches, their retirement. It
means $9 billion more for the Massachusetts economy -- and that means new
businesses, new opportunities, new jobs."
Ready or not, the mother of all ballot fights is about to begin. Better buckle up. |
