“Remember when your sixth-grade math teacher never let you get away with just giving the answer? You always had to ‘show your work.’ That same principle should absolutely apply to any explanation to taxpayers about property taxes.”
So writes Mark Haveman, executive director for the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, an independent voice not tied to any political ideology, who has been serving the public good since their founding in 1926.
While local government makes information on budgets available at your fingertips, there is often a troubling lack of context for that information. This makes taxpayer oversight and judgment about the competence and efficiency of local levy decisions problematic.
Compounding this regrettable reality, the comments and context local government officials provide often confuses more than helps enlighten . . . one comes to believe, by design.
Haveman says there should be “mathematical calculations behind every levy.” What he is suggesting is that budget numbers be clearly depicted and understood from their source and be presented and compared to previous years.
If the precondition were to painstakingly “show your work,” it would be elementary for members of the public to assign reasons for levy growth to the correct causes.
According to Haven, however, “In all our years, we’ve never seen a local government present a levy change this way.”
Might be because local officials don’t want taxpayers to ask the question, “Is the government doing anything it really shouldn’t be doing?”
“To some extent this will always be in the eye of the beholder,” acknowledges Haveman, “but special government ventures can create undue taxpayer exposure.” Isn’t that the truth!
Consider any number of local government forays into business management and the world of profit and loss (strong emphasis on loss here); i.e., Superior National Golf Course, Cedar Grove Business Park, YMCA, and now Day Care Facilities . . .
As we have witnessed in this county, too often ambitions exceed sound fiscal judgment, especially when such ventures require significant capital investment. Add to this the fact these experiments operate outside the general fund and are therefore largely off the budget radar screen. This makes it especially difficult for taxpayers to evaluate what they are not able to see.
As Haveman puts it, “In these circumstances government budgets rich in fiber have an excellent chance of creating something taxpayers will have to clean up later.”
Might I suggest Cook County is the poster child for taxpayers saddled with the responsibility to clean up later?
Haveman maintains, “The property tax is the most untransparent transparent tax. On the one hand, it’s ‘in your face’ presence makes it a great way to calibrate people’s expectations of government with their willingness to pay for it. On the other hand, the complexities of modern government and its ability to control narratives makes it difficult for taxpayers to make independent judgments about how their tax dollars are used.”
Billy Hamilton, a columnist for State Tax Notes who in his spare time moonlights as the executive vice-chancellor and CFO for Texas A&M, is one of Haveman’s favorite tax policy observers.
Hamilton offers perspective on the nature of tax policy in “Tax Rules for Realists.” Hamilton’s premise for his commentary is based on the 2016 book Democracy for Realists.
The book contrasts how democracy is supposed to work–according to eighth-grade civics classes–with how it really works–based on the fact that people are too busy with their lives to give political issues the attention they deserve and must rely on social identity and partisan loyalties to establish their positions on issues.
Here’s a small sampling of Hamilton’s 35 tax rules:
Rule #3: “Taxes are the price someone else pays for a civilized society.”
Rule #5: “All statistics conceal a lie (based on the recognition that 1. Numbers often fail to tell the complete story, and 2. Data can be framed, shaped, and manipulated into fiscal origami to tell the political story that wants to be told.)”
Rule #28: “The state’s considered guidance may be a taxpayer’s detrimental reliance.”
When it comes to Cook County, there continues to be this unending allure and “value proposition” for local government spending . . . regardless of the associated tax burden.
The proposed new jail facility–or whatever socially sellable alias they’ve labeled it–is another “value proposition” that fits into the category of boondoggle big ideas for a county our size.
During his 2014 farewell address, Washington, D. C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray declared, “Fiscal responsibility may not sound glamorous–but it is the foundation for everything a government does.”
I think I learned that in sixth grade . . .
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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