Big spenders, big taxers

An editorial from the Storm Lake Times Pilot

The only certainties in life are death and promises by Republicans to do something about property taxes in Iowa. So it goes again this year. House Speaker Pat Grassley said it’s the top issue of the GOP caucus going into this session. Freeze them, cap them, rejigger the valuation classes, fulminate. Alas, everything they do results in higher property taxes that dash the American Dream.

Republicans have controlled tax policy at the statehouse for many years. Back in the 1980s we recall Gov. Terry Branstad calling for a blue-ribbon committee to discuss structural changes to our archaic system. We are not sure what happened to that committee, or others. We cannot recall what the freezes resulting in tax slush did 30 years ago. They had about as much effect as the blue-ribbon task forces. We have a school aid formula that requires an advanced degree from the University of Northern Iowa to figure out, and an agland productivity formula for tax assessment that has nothing to do with current productivity or profit. They are attempts to limit property tax increases. There are limits on how much valuations can go up in a year. And there are more limits, we suppose.

Still, our property taxes shoot up. You would think our newspaper office were located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for the property valuation. What is a metal shed worth along the railroad tracks? Plenty, the tax man declares, who couldn’t care less that independent businesses can’t take this sort of beating from the government. Maybe that is the point.

This despite all the limits on property valuations and tax assessments.

The Republicans hold huge majorities in the legislature. Terry Branstad was the longest-serving governor in US history. His immediate successor, Kim Reynolds, has chopped and chopped and wants to eliminate the state income tax. Well of course the burden has to shift somewhere if you intend to run schools. The man in steel-toe boots cannot run away from property taxes and higher sales taxes, but the lobbyist in loafers is doing fine.

Republicans have controlled government in Buena Vista County forever. They are programmed to complain about state mandates. They support and campaign for the legislators who set the policy that allows taxes to rise and rise and rise, year after year after year. And, they blow money just like legislators do.

County spending is controlled by members of the Republican Buena Vista County Board of Supervisors and auditor. School program spending is controlled by the legislature though the Byzantine school aid formula based on enrollment. City officials like to claim they are conservative with the tax dollar but we have sat through budget hearings where no question is raised.

If you actually want to control property taxes, you should quit electing big-spenders who can’t keep track of the taxes they already get.

The county either is not paying the city or it is paying too much in tax increment financing revenue, according to finance officials. The city and county cannot seem to agree on what the right number should be, because they do not understand it and they are allowed to get away with it. That much is obvious. Despite the city and county losing track of some $5 million in TIF revenue, and Lord knows what else, everybody gets a raise and a pat on the back while they sue each other at our expense. Our property taxes are going to lawyers in Des Moines.

We could wish that there were an alternative to this. If we actually had fiscal conservatives running the statehouse and the courthouse, our property taxes would not need another fix. A farmer could figure out his property assessment without the aid of a CPA. We would not favor multi-residential properties over other classes, but that was a giveaway engineered by a so-called conservative Republican legislature and governor to satisfy big donors. So is the attempt to do away with the progressive income tax.

These people who gave us tax reform and closed down the nursing homes in Newell and Albert City are the same ones who want to reform taxes yet again. The result is likely to be more small businesses that cannot afford the taxes on a building, much less a mortgage. The result is likely more consolidation with tax policy that favors the consolidator.

The solution is fewer tax schemes and abatements for wealthy corporations. Storm Lake alone has racked up $41 million in economic development debt to be paid off by TIF revenues that they cannot competently track. For all this economic development we can barely afford the property taxes.

The solution is not a new law written by compromised politicians of limited fiscal sophistication. The answer is in spending less, being straight with the public, and getting rid of corporate welfare in the form of tax schemes and corporate tax giveaways (such as by eliminating the state income tax).

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this editorial appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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