by Jim Martin
You have probably been
bombarded with junk mail, robo-calls, and television commercials encouraging
you to vote for the TSPLOST (transportation local option sales tax) on July 31.
The expense and magnitude of this effort as well as the lack of an equally well
funded contra campaign may have made you suspicious of those who are behind it.
These are companies that have a big financial interest in seeing this thing
happen, as it will transfer an enormous sum of money from taxpayers to various
contractors. It will also increase the value of specific assemblages of land.
The support of local officials for this thing has been bought with the promise
of a 15% kick back to local budgets. Politicians, like as our anti-tax
governor, are naturally attracted to proposals like this that allow them to
raise taxes while publicly maintaining that they have not raised taxes. In
short, there is something in this for everyone except the taxpayers.
Our leaders who are now asserting that this tax will fund desperately needed projects are the same officials who have chosen not to fund these projects for years. Clearly they perceive these projects to be less important than other expenditures such as the ill-fate Brand Atlanta Campaign (“every day is an opening day”). Of course, these are only reasons to be suspicious of the TSPLOST and not reasons to vote against it. Here are 13 reasons to vote against it:
Our leaders who are now asserting that this tax will fund desperately needed projects are the same officials who have chosen not to fund these projects for years. Clearly they perceive these projects to be less important than other expenditures such as the ill-fate Brand Atlanta Campaign (“every day is an opening day”). Of course, these are only reasons to be suspicious of the TSPLOST and not reasons to vote against it. Here are 13 reasons to vote against it:
1. This is not “just a penny”
it is about $8 billion. It would have added more than a dime to the cost of my
lunch today, over a hundred dollars to my total tax bill last year, or a few
hundred dollars to the price of a new car. I would choose to spend this money
differently if it were not taken in taxes.
2. This tax, unlike the
watershed and APS sales taxes, will not offset any other taxes or fees. It will
only fund new expenditures most of which would not otherwise occur.
3. This tax will be paid by us,
not by someone else. Although it is often pointed out that non residents
shopping in the city will contribute somewhat to this revenue stream, their
contribution is never quantified. It is likely that the reason for this is that
the tax will be overwhelming paid by the same people who are now being asked to
vote for it (us). Unless about a quarter of the tax is paid by others (see #4
below) the average Atlantan will lose on this deal regardless of the merits of
transit expenditures.
4. Sales taxes are not
deductible on federal income tax returns and thus forego a federal subsidy of
about 27% (the average marginal income tax rate) compared to deductible taxes.
$1 worth of transit therefore costs taxpayers about $0.73 when it is paid for
with property taxes or state income taxes, but costs us the full $1 when it is
paid for with sales taxes or fees.
5. The proposed projects are
designed to benefit the suburbs at the expense of the city. They are
overwhelmingly commuter-oriented and will therefore make distant suburbs more
attractive communities in comparison to city neighborhoods. Large areas of
Atlanta are under built and sparsely populated. Our area (the northwest) has a
lot of vacant land ready for residential development and a lot of affordable
residences in a variety of forms including single family houses. We will create
a disincentive for the purchase and improvement of this with the TSPLOST
projects. Atlanta is not Manhattan and does not require more infrastructure to
support unnecessarily long commutes.
6. Sales taxes are regressive.
They preferentially impact the poor and middle classes who spend most of their
incomes locally rather than saving, investing, and traveling. These are the
people who can least afford to fund new expenditures.
7. Sales taxes (unlike gas
taxes) have nothing to do with roads or with transit. No rationale has ever
been provided for tying this tax to these projects other than that those
proposing it think that it will be an easier proposal to sell to the uneducated
public than others that actually make sense.
8. Sales taxes are already high
in Atlanta and increasing them further will be bad for commerce. With this tax,
the sales tax rate in Atlanta will be 9%, one of the highest in the country.
With increasing local sales taxes, consumers will be less likely to patronize
local merchants vis-à-vis tax-free mail-order merchants.
9. There is no evidence that
the proposed TSPLOST projects will solve any regional traffic problems.
Planners acknowledge that these represent a very small fraction of the transit
projects that they would like to build. Previous “fixes” for traffic problems
have been remarkably ineffective at reducing traffic and effective at
increasing suburban sprawl. The extension of 400 did not solve freeway
congestion. It built Alpharetta.
10. This tax is unlikely to be
temporary. Both the APS sales tax and the water and sewer tax were originally
proposed as temporary measures. Both have since been renewed twice, both have
become part of the operating budgets of the associated authorities, and both
are now re-pitched to voters with the rationale that their revenue is needed
for routine operations and therefore offsets property taxes and water rates.
11. The proposed TSPLOST
projects are not particularly progressive. Many of these are simply road
building projects of the sort that we have been engaged in for many decades.
Others involve transit with minimal utility. Some are so ill defined that it is
absurd to dedicate large sums to their construction.
12. The proposed Cobb County
transit line, which will be funded with more than $600 million from the
TSPLOST, will probably be bad for Berkeley Park and the surrounding
communities. The planners involved with this project are dedicated to bringing
a rail line off of I-75 onto Northside Drive. This rail line is quite likely to
come through Berkeley Park and Loring Heights. See the April 2012 BPNA
newsletter for more details on this.
13. Creating dedicated revenue
streams, as the TSPLOST proposes to do, is intrinsically problematic. This is
unnecessary as we already have too many structures in place to fund transit
(city, county, state, federal, ABI, ADA, GRTA, ARC, MARTA, CCT, etc.). New
structures will create new overhead expenditures, obscure responsibility, and
create new opportunities for high-interest borrowing. One of the proposed
projects, the Beltline, involves bailing out another project for which a different
dedicated revenue stream (the TAD) has already been created and burdened with
expensive debt.
Comments:
Expanding the MARTA trains beyond DeKalb, Fulton and the
City of Atlanta is just nuts. MARTA can’t
pay its current bills and more empty buses and trains will only make it
worse. Regionalism undermines city and
county sovereignty. Why would we vote to
put our roads under the control of an appointed, unelected soviet-style, central
planning, crony infested, top-down, unaccountable committee ? Google TrafficTruth.net and Vote NO on
T-SPLOST.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
Here are the facts of Region 3 TSPLOST, as presented in the "final project list":
ReplyDeleteTHINK about how many of these projects will help "untie" (or NOT) the traffic knot:
Note: numbers are rounded
Summary:
TOTAL: $6.1 BILLION
1) $2.90 BILLION for "roadways"
2) $3.16 BILLION for "transit"
$3.16 BILLION for "Transit" breaks out this way:
1) $3.2 million for updates to a Cobb County airport
2) $24.1 million for bike paths
3) $1.23 BILLION for MARTA repairs & upgrades (tracks, elevators, lighting, signals, etc.)
4) $37 million to extend MARTA from Northsprings station to Holcomb Bridge Road (approx. 7
miles)
5) $95 million for GRTA bus service
6) $382 million for other bus service
7) $602 million for Atlanta streetcars
8) $700 million for DESIGN of new rail service "Lindbergh Center to Emory / Centers for Disease Control"
9) $95 million for DESIGN of "I-85 north corridor" rail
10) $20 million for rail - Atlanta to Griffin
These are the facts.