My campaign platform was created to save you money through better stewardship of existing tax dollars. We can better leverage our county tax receipts to ultimately reduce excessive local government debt which burdens taxpayers.
But let’s talk about sales tax. Our county sales tax structure is failing taxpayers. Your Benton County government only receives 15% of our county general one-cent sales tax. By state statute, general sales tax revenue is divided up by population to the cities — Rogers gets 25% for instance. After the 2030 U.S Census, that will drop to about 10% as our biggest cities grow in population. It will eventually fail to provide meaningful funding for county services.
Our Sales Tax Structure Discriminates against Smaller Cities
Our current sales tax structure provides fuel for our bigger cities to grow that smaller cities don’t receive. Residents of smaller cities drive to the bigger cities for work, shopping, and entertainment and spend their money there. It further robs the smaller cities of sales tax revenue they need to grow. It is a vicious cycle.
Revising Our Sales Tax Structure
Revising the structure of our sales tax would allow us to fund specific segments of community needs. Converting a portion of our county’s sale tax to a dedicated purpose would ensure stable funding — without increasing your sales tax rate*.
Dedicating a portion of that sales tax to water/sewer infrastructure could create a pool of money to distribute via a grant process to our municipalities and county projects based on need rather than population. It could provide interest-free funding for water/sewer projects so our cities could grow without debt that only raises your taxes and utility rates.
It would be prudent to do the same one-eighth-cent reallocation for criminal justice, law enforcement, and public safety.
Our growth is forcing our cities and their taxpayers into debt. Our county is debt free, but if we don’t reallocate a portion of the sales tax to a dedicated purpose, we will eventually be forced into debt because of growth-related infrastructure needs.
This Must Happen at the Ballot Box
We should ask voters to approve a small sales tax for a dedicated purpose (water/sewer or criminal justice, for instance) AND THEN REDUCE THE CURRENT COUNTY ONE-CENT SALES TAX BY THE SAME AMOUNT.
Voters approve it in a two-step process.
Step 1.
We go to the voters and ask for a 1/8th of one cent sales tax dedicated to criminal justice and public safety in the primary election.
Step 2.
If voters say yes, then in the general election, we ask them to lower the county general sales tax by the same amount. Surely voters would say yes to a tax decrease.
A Neutral Impact to Voters in the End
By today’s sales tax receipts, it would raise almost $12 million. Check my math: that 1/8th of one cent sales tax on a $100 bag of groceries is 12.5 cents.
The cities would see a small decrease in their county general sales tax income. but it will provide more fair distribution to all cities in the county. All cities would see benefit from the reallocation.
* State statute doesn’t allow us to do both steps on the same ballot issue. There is no Step 2 if voters do not approve Step 1. I’m wondering if it would be possible for both tax changes to take effect on the same day — avoiding even a short financial impact on the taxpayer between the two election cycles.