News

Quarter-cent sales tax on ballot with no advocates

Bill Lapsley

By Bill Moss, Published: October 30, 2016

If victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, the local option sales tax is looking very much like the latter.

“There’s no campaign that I know of,” said Commissioner Bill Lapsley, who was on the losing end of two efforts to tie the sales tax to a property tax reduction. “You’d have to ask the chairman.”
Got it. What sayeth the chair?
“There is no campaign basically,” Tommy Thompson said. “We as a county organization cannot promote that in an active electoral type endeavor. We cannot expend public funds. We would hope that there would have been others such as those would benefit but they evidently haven’t come forth.”
So the even if the quarter-cent sales tax were to win, it will have done so in a campaign vacuum. It’s already an orphan.
While Thompson is right that the county can’t lobby for the sales tax, nothing in the law prevents commissioners from supporting the measure.
“You can give out information but you cannot advocate how people vote,” County Attorney Russ Burrell said. “They can individually do anything they want. They can say whatever they want as individuals but they can’t spend any money on it.”
The Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution last January in support of the $2 billion Connect NC bond issue that voters approved in the March primary.
“That’s different,” Burrell said. “That’s not something that they actually spend. They have to be a little more careful” when it comes to their own budget. “The theory is it would sound like they were influencing their employees if they were as a group to adopt an official position of the Henderson County government.”
Commissioners also could have talked about the need for taxpayers’ money for specific capital projects like a new $20 million law enforcement training center, $13.6 million emergency services complex and school construction.
“Yes, they could say it,” Burrell said. “No, they can’t tie it to it. They can’t say we will use this (money) for that because they can’t tie two years from now a Board of Commissioners to anything.”
Lapsley and Commissioner Grady Hawkins tried twice to formally commit the board to a property tax rollback if voters OK the quarter-cent sales tax on Nov. 8. The sales tax would raise roughly $2½ million a year; a penny on the property tax levy generates $1.283 million. Commissioners raised the property tax last spring by 5 cents per $100 valuation, again on a 3-2 vote. Lapsley argued for a 3-cent property tax rollback as a pledge if the sales tax passes.
“Based on actions the board took with regard to the budget I stated then I found it hard to support the sales tax increase based on the property tax increase,” Lapsley said last week. “I don’t support it. I haven’t campaigned against it. I’ve just kept my mouth shut. To the best of my knowledge the board hasn’t done any actions supporting it.”
Lapsley agreed that publicizing specific capital projects in the pipeline might have boosted the referendum’s chance of success.
“That would certainly make sense to me, to show that it’s not going to the general fund to get lost, that there was a specific reason for it. I think that would help,” he said. “But the board hasn’t indicated one way or another.”
While Thompson, joined by commissioners Michael Edney and Charlie Messer, voted no on a formal commitment to a property tax rollback, he said he favors the reduction if conditions support it.
“We had talked in generalities that if the quarter cent sales tax were to pass there is a definite desire to utilize those monies for the overall budget and decrease the millage,” he said. “That has been said on numerous occasions. We’ve had two opportunities (to commit to a rollback) but we don’t have that great big ball to know what’s going to happen. It’s our intent to lower the millage by the use of those funds as opposed to throwing it at some particular project.”
Thompson appears to be half right when he says all five members are in favor of the sales tax and in favor of rollback.
“It’s our intent, our hope and our desire to do so but we’ve not voted for that because we can’t tie ourselves down not knowing what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s my belief that all of us are for the quarter-cent sales tax. It’s also my belief that all of us are for lowering the millage. But to say that we’re going to specifically do something we’re not willing to do that.”
Competing with the desire for a rollback, however, are other needs, or at least suggestions, that cost money.
“We’ve even talked with some of the school people saying we need to get the supplement higher to keep ’em from going to South Carolina, keep ’em from running over here to Buncombe County,” Thompson said. “But to say that that’s what we will do and guarantee that something else happens we don’t feel comfortable.”
The School Board has taken no position on the sales tax referendum.
“There was talk about that they would support it but I haven’t see any campaigns,” Thompson said. “I don’t know if everything’s very quiet and it’s under the cover. The problem with a tax is any time you say the word tax people don’t like it.”