June 03, 2003
Possibility of State Education Funding Confuses New Local Tax Levies
Coming on the heels of the revelation that some Beaverton residents happen to live in both Multnomah County and the Beaverton Public Schools district -- and so are stuck with both a county income tax and a district property tax, until and unless the jurisdictions involved work out a way to structure a partial refund -- comes a trio of stories today that call recent local tax measures into question given current state education funding proposals.
Today's Oregonian launches us into the issues involved:
Gov. Ted Kulongoski's recent proposal for $5.3 billion in state school funding would give Multnomah County schools enough money to chop the county's newly minted personal income tax by as much as a third this year.
Even if Kulongoski gets his proposal through the Legislature, county officials say the county might delay cutting the 1.25 percent tax for at least a year.
Dave Boyer, Multnomah County's finance director, said Monday that before cutting the rate, he would like to see whether the promised state school budget holds up and whether collections of Oregon's only county income tax are as high as expected.
Although the county ballot included a provision involving "immediate termination or reduction" of the tax in the event the state coughed up proper education monies, it's reasonable for the county to wait and see if this funding exists in reality and not just in theory. Anti-tax activists, of course, have a different take on the matter:
Tax activist Don McIntire, who opposed the county tax, said the county was practicing "government by ad lib." McIntire doubts taxpayers will get any taxes back.
"They want to keep their hands on the money," he said.
McIntire and others of his particular ilk, however, are less concerned with government spending money responsibly than they are with dismantling services such as public education altogether. So, as always, I hope you had your grain of salt handy for the above.
For what it's worth, KGW has it's own version of the above-referenced Oregonian article.
Meanwhile, Beaverton officials are struggling with much the same issue:
"We took the initiative to solve the problem," Meyer says. "And because we solved the problem, we not only had to not make the cuts, but we became a catalyst for what's happening in Salem. It would be really perverse if someone said that wasn't necessary because it was the local option that kicked those guys in the butt, so to speak."
School board members could take any number of steps if the district receives more money from the state than expected, including opting not to levy the property tax or using the extra money to bring back programs cut during the 1990s.
Which would make it appear that the Beaverton property tax measure didn't, perhaps, include a provision to reduce or eliminate all or some of the tax in the event of proper state funding, leaving it to a potential administrative option of simply not collecting the tax.