Sunday Sales & SPLOST 4 Referenda

Here is an excerpt from a Banner-Herald story about Athens-Clarke County’s anticipated Sunday sales referendum from about ten days ago:

Commissioners had considered placing Sunday sales on the ballot in November but opted not to because of a conflict with a November vote on continuing a 1 percent sales tax for local schools.

"We don't want to clutter up the ELOST vote," Commissioner Alice Kinman said. "I don't think it's good to have those two hitched together."

Commissioners say they are concerned that Sunday sales could draw opponents to the polls who also would vote against the Education Local Option Sales Tax, which will fund school construction.

County elections are on an even-year schedule, and Athens-Clarke County would have to pick up the $54,000 tab for a special election this year, an expense the Clarke County School District budgeted for but Athens-Clarke County did not.

"I just don't see how you could justify the cost," Commissioner Doug Lowry said.

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

The first is that the scheduling of referenda, either directly on SPLOST questions or other matters, by the Unified Government and/or Clarke County School District so as to rig the turnout to get a preferred outcome is yet another reason that Georgia's SPLOST law needs to be rewritten.  The idea of splitting the Unified Government’s Sunday sales referenda from the CCSD’s SPLOST 4 referenda so that our betters can prevent the wrong people from voting on both issues simultaneously is inappropriate and condescending.

The second is that City Hall’s preference for a March vote out of monetary concerns rings hollow.  Both November 2011 and March 2012 fall within the Unified Government’s FY 2012 budget, which has already passed.  If funds for a vote in November were not in the budget, were funds for a vote in March?  If so, why?  And if so, could not the funds be used just as easily in November?  If not, the supposed preference for the latter date due to fiscal concerns is specious.

Besides which, if the Commission wanted the vote in November, it would find the money for it, just money has been "found" over the years for all manner of expenditures.  As Kinman makes quite clear, the concern of our betters in government is political, not fiscal.

In the event, I will vote for Sunday sales and against the CCSD's SPLOST 4.  The fact that it will take two trips to the poll separated by months will have no effect whatsoever on my positions.

As an aside, Georgia’s presidential preference primary is scheduled as part of Super Tuesday in February 2012, but that is not one of the opportunities for ballot questions specified by state law.

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Property Tax Primer Followup

I posted what appears below on AthenTalks as a follow up to my most recent column about how property tax is determined.

A chart detailing the various millage rates charged in each of Athens-Clarke County’s five tax districts used to be posted on the Tax Commissioner’s web site; I could not find the chart on City Hall’s new and improved (and expensive) web site. Upon speaking with the staff at the Tax Commissioner’s office so as to verify my information, I was told that they will try to get that chart reposted. In the interim, see page 7 of this from the Georgia Department of Revenue for the current breakdown of millage rates here in Athens-Clarke County (does not have the rates for Bogart and Winterville).

For listings of exemptions, see these from the State of Georgia and these from Athens-Clarke County.

For discussions of assessments, see these from the State of Georgia and these from Athens-Clarke County.

While they do not apply to most cases, there are a couple of “preferential” assessment categories (rehabilitated historic property or landmark historic property) and several “special” assessment categories (preferential agricultural property, conservation use property, environmentally sensitive property, farm land property, brownfield property, residential transitional property), a category for timberland (standing), and one for equipment, machinery, and fixtures.

For the provisions of SB 346 that mandate annual assessment and estimated tax notices, see O.C.G.A. §48-5-306.

Then there is this from a blog posting over at TOA from June 2008:

Back in 2007, the Clarke County School District’s SPLOST 3 bond resolution included a provision that, should the limited duration sales tax be insufficient to repay said bonds, any shortfall would be added to the CCSD’s portion of the local property tax millage rate. Longtime readers may remember that I had two specific concerns with regard to any such transfer of bonded indebtedness to property taxes.

My first concern dealt with the 20 mills limit imposed by the state Constitution. The CCSD’s portion of the local property tax millage rate has been at the 20 mills limit for years; to exceed that limit would normally require the voters’ approval to do so via a referendum. So how could that line be administratively traversed so as to make up a SPLOST revenue shortfall without a referendum?

After a (very) long and circuitous journey through a variety of local and state government bureaucracies, the Attorney General’s office provided me with the relevant Georgia Supreme Court case law, Seaboard Air-Line Railway Company v. Wright, comptroller-general, et al., from way back in 1927, that exempted bond debt service from any constitutional limit. I do not agree with the reasoning embodied in that decision, as it would seem to render the rationale for the 20 mills limit moot, but the case law is what it is.

Satisfying my second concern has proven somewhat more vexing. The CCSD’s bond resolution cited a provision contained in the Constitution as expressly permitting the transfer of bonded indebtedness from SPLOST sales taxes to property taxes. That resolution read in part (see the second paragraph on page 5 of the PDF):

WHEREAS, Article IX, Section V, Paragraph VI of the Constitution of the State of Georgia requires that prior to the issuance of general obligation bonds, a tax must be levied in amounts sufficient to pay the principal of and the interest on the Bonds as the same become due and payable, to the extent that the revenues from the Sales Tax are not sufficient thereof;

The resolution was littered throughout with similar language. Being a nerdy type reasonably familiar with the verbiage in the Constitution, this immediately struck me as odd. Sure enough, when I went to the document itself, no such provision was anywhere to be found. The actual text of Article IX, Section V, Paragraph VI of the Constitution reads (see page 81):

"Levy of taxes to pay bonds; sinking fund required. Any county, municipality, or other political subdivision of this state shall at or before the time of incurring bonded indebtedness provide for the assessment and collection of an annual tax sufficient in amount to pay the principal and interest of said debt within 30 years from the incurring of such bonded indebtedness. The proceeds of this tax, together with any other moneys collected for this purpose, shall be placed in a sinking fund to be used exclusively for paying the principal and interest on such bonded debt. Such moneys shall be held and kept separate and apart from all other revenues collected and may be invested and reinvested as provided by law."

There is no mention whatsoever of transferring bonded indebtedness from a sales tax to property tax, just a general provision that a sinking fund to repay bonds be in place before such bonds are issued. Explicitly contrary to my reading of the CCSD’s resolution, the Constitution is mute on the subject of transferring any shortfall in sales tax collections to property tax “to the extent that revenues from the Sales Tax are not sufficient therefore.”

After an even longer and more circuitous journey through a variety of local and state government bureaucracies – the Attorney General’s office clammed up on me this time – I eventually discovered, after speaking with a bond attorney over in Atlanta, that the answer can be found in O.C.G.A. §48-1-121(c):

"No general obligation debt shall be issued in conjunction with the imposition of the tax unless the governing authority of the county or qualified municipalities within special district issuing the debt determines that, and if the debt is to be validated it is demonstrated in the validation proceedings that, during each year in which any payment of principal or interest on the debt comes due the county or qualified municipalities within special district issuing such debt will receive from the tax authorized by this part net proceeds sufficient to fully satisfy such liability. General obligation debt issued under this part shall be payable first from the separate account in which are placed the proceeds received by the county or qualified municipalities within the special district issuing such debt from the tax authorized by this part. Such debt, however, shall constitute a pledge of the full faith, credit, and taxing power of the county or qualified municipalities within the special district issuing such debt; and any liability on said debt which is not satisfied from the proceeds of the tax authorized by this part shall be satisfied from the general funds of the county or qualified municipalities within the special district issuing such debt."

Okay, that answers the question as to on what legal basis a shortfall in SPLOST sales taxes may be transferred to property taxes, though it is not explicitly stated in that manner.

But the question remains: why did not the CCSD’s bond resolution cite this section of state law? Why make language up out of whole cloth and claim that it is in the Constitution, when a few seconds on the Internet reveals that claim to be patently false?

Finally, consider the games that can be played with millage rates when they are considered irrespective of the “rollback rate“. This from another TOA post from May of 2009:

The 0.3 mills reduction in 2004 was due solely to the work of members of the Clarke County Republican Party, who analyzed the budget and presented a list of potential reductions to the folks down at City Hall. To their credit, the Mayor and Commission did adopt many of our recommendations, thereby “freeing up” funds for a millage rate reduction. It should never be forgotten, though, that the original plan was simply to spend the new revenue generated by growth in the tax digest (this last part always seems to get left out of the discussion).

The 0.6 mills reduction in 2005 was a sham, pure and simple. The millage rate reduction was offset by the institution of the stormwater utility fee (even the Unified Government’s budget documents acknowledged this) which, by design, also hit those property owners such as churches and schools who are exempt from property tax. Now, we will have the situation where the millage rate is back to within 0.2 mills of where it was prior to the imposition of the fee – a fee that will be with us forever regardless of future millage rate hikes. Because of increases in assessments the “rollback” rate in any given year may well be lower that the millage rate - so property taxes can actually go up if the millage rate stays constant or, in some cases, even goes down.

For what it is worth, my assessment and estimated tax notice arrived in the mail on Friday; after increasing in 2008 and remaining the same in 2009 and 2010, this years fair market value dropped (finally) by 11.61% - as well it should have.

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Local FY 2012 Budget Hearings

Here is the FY 2012 budget adoption schedule for the Clarke County School District:

Tuesday, 17 May:  Public hearing at Gaines Elementary School (900 Gaines School Road)

Tuesday, 24 May:  Public hearing at Alps Road Elementary School (205 Alps Road)

Thursday, 26 May:  Public hearing at CCSD administrative offices (240 Mitchell Bridge Road)

Thursday, 02 June:  Board of Education agenda-setting meeting at CCSD administrative offices (240 Mitchell Bridge Road)

Thursday, 09 June:  Board of Education regular monthly meeting and final adoption at CCSD administrative offices (240 Mitchell Bridge Road)

All three public hearings are scheduled for 6:00 p.m.; both Board of Education meetings are scheduled for 6:30 p.m.  You can review the CCSD’s “budget overview” (2 pages), “tentative budget” (3 pages), and “tentative budget presentation” (16 slides) – but not the budget in its entirety.

Here is the same information for the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County:

Thursday, 05 May: Budget review at Bob M. Snipes Water Resource Center (780 Barber Street)

Monday, 09 May:  Budget review and public hearing at the Government Building auditorium (120 Dougherty Street)

Wednesday, 11 May:  Budget review at Bob M. Snipes Water Resource Center (780 Barber Street) – noted to be “if needed”

Tuesday, 07 June:  Regular monthly meeting and final adoption at City Hall Commission Chamber (301 College Avenue)

All three budget review sessions are scheduled for 5:30 p.m.; the Commission’s regular monthly meeting is scheduled for 7:00 p.m.  Note that public comment will not be taken at all of these meetings (I assume that since the proposed budget does not include a millage rate increase and that the value of the property tax digest is expected to be down the “rollback rate” for FY 2012 is lower than for FY 2011 thereby obviating TBOR requirements).  You can review the mayor's recommended budget in its entirety (355 pages).

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You Can Check Out Anytime You Like . . .

. . . but you can never leave.* Such was the thought that came to me late last Saturday afternoon. After Mrs. TOA and I spend a pleasant couple of hours at the State Botanical Garden it came time to leave, as the temperature started to drop (and high school prom folks started to arrive). But we could not leave. A rather large tree had fallen across the road leading to the lower parking lot, the one in front of the visitors center, thereby keeping us confined.

We were in about the fourth car in line to get out, and quite a few more stacked up behind us. After a while a couple of female employees appeared with a chain saw. I must confess that I did not have much faith in the woman wielding the implement (it was my understanding that liability considerations prevented any of us mere civilians from operating it) - but, in fact, she did just fine with the thing. We onlookers hauled and pushed limbs and logs off of the road and had the obstacle removed in about 10 to 15 minutes.

All in all, in was not a bad experience. A group of strangers teamed together to achieve a needed, common goal - and then went their separate ways.

*Apologies to Don Felder, Don Henley, and Glen Frey.

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CCSD Finally Posts FY 2011 Budget (no, not the proposed one for FY 2012)

The Clarke County School District has modified its “Our Budget” web page in response to my latest opinion column in the Banner-Herald. This was entirely predictable and, quite frankly, has become old hat.

The web page still provides links to the various, though cursory, materials pertaining to the “tentative” budget proposed for FY 2012. Gone is the older, outdated material. Added this week (finally) is the FY 2011 Budget, meaning the one for the current fiscal year that is almost over.

Note though, that the CCSD’s $118,481,353 FY 2011 budget only comes to 64 pages. By contrast, the Unified Government’s $106,793,709 FY 2011 budget runs some 338 pages.

That being the case, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that City Hall’s budget is far more specific than that of the CCSD - and it has been posted on its web site since last spring when it was unveiled.

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Impertinent Observations (fiscal edition)

I cannot help but think that last week’s federal “budget” negotiations were a complete sham (actually the horse trading concerned yet another continuing resolution – the budget should have been passed last year but was not).  I fear that in the long run, as Macbeth may have noted, they were “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” substantive insofar as actually cutting spending in a meaningful way.  The upcoming talks on the next fiscal year’s budget and increasing the federal debt ceiling will, in all likelihood, simply constitute more of the same.

The Clarke County School District is out with its budget for FY 2012.  Despite the claim that it is an “austerity" budget, the folks over on Mitchell Bridge Road actually intend to increase spending over the current fiscal year.  For some commentary, see my column in next Sunday’s Banner-Herald.

The folks down at City Hall have been talking about their FY 2012 budget in work sessions, but have yet to release it or the proposed millage rate.

Finally, while I agreed in principle with the Special Council’s quest to broaden the tax base for the State of Georgia while simultaneously reducing rates, there was quite a lot not to like about the specific proposals, especially those that would have injected the government into “casual” transactions.  Oh well, perhaps the exercise may lead to something productive in the next session of the General Assembly.

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Disingenuous Sophistry

This article concerning population growth in the Athens area turned up in yesterday’s Banner-Herald.  According to the Census Bureau, the estimated 2010 population of Clarke County was 116,842.  This constitutes an increase of 15,353 (15.13%) from the tally of 101,489 back in 2000.

If I remember correctly from past population counts, those figures include UGA students who live here.  Predictably, local officials are more than happy to have such folks claim local residence – the more your population the more state and federal goodies to which you can lay claim.

But, insofar as I could get any specificity out of them, the supporters of the SPLOST 2011 ballot resolution counted those same residents as “visitors” to our fair burgh, because doing so allowed them to make the claim that half of the revenue generated by such taxes will be paid by folks who do not live here.

And so it goes.

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Impertinent Observations

I expected my column on the Clarke County School District’s proposed SPLOST 4 to be in last Sunday’s Banner-Herald.  Alas, it was not; perhaps it will appear this coming Sunday.

This Project Blue Heron concept strikes me as a horrible idea for a variety of reasons (and I do have several years of economic development experience, so my concerns are not merely me carping about something by virtue of my prejudices, which I freely admit by the way).  The concept strikes me as precisely what we do not need, specifically that of having even more property under the expensive and regulatory thumb of City Hall.  And anyone who believes the exceptionally rosy projections as to tax revenue and employment that will be generated by the development is a damned fool.

So now the push is on for yet another type of special purpose local option sales tax, on top of LOST, the Unified Government’s SPLOST, and the Clarke County School District’s SPLOST.  This time it is TSPLOST, ostensibly dedicated to regional transportation projects.  I hope that this gets voted down, but expect county governments to run out the full court press by predicting all manner of tragedy and mayhem should the ballot resolution fail.

The incessant lamentations about potential HOPE scholarship cutbacks are getting really tiresome.  Imagine the horrors of having to pay for some of your own education.  The HOPE issue presents a microcosm of government: start out with a reasonable idea that is limited in scope and expense (a scholarship program for high achieving students of limited means); then others exert pressure to get included in the gravy train (prompting politicians to expand the program to cover vastly more students, thereby buying votes from students and parents); unintended, though entirely predictable, consequences ensue (rampant grade inflation prompting an explosion of remedial classes in colleges and universities); the economy goes south so the bloated budget of the program must take a hit (much political posturing ensues); students and parents man the barricades so as to protect what its owed to them (needed reforms are substantially watered down).  That which started out as a scholarship program morphs into an entitlement program.  Like I said – a microcosm of government.

Perceptive readers will have noticed a theme, namely that of governments’ use of my money, running through all of the matters noted.

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Lies. Damned Lies. Statistics.

For the second time is less than two and a half years, the "Facts & Figures" page on the CCSD web site has been extensively revised due to me bringing the use of outdated, not to mention un-sourced and mathematically problematic, figures to the public in the pages of the Banner-Herald.

The first time was in October 2008, leading up to elections for spots on the Clarke County Board of Education.  I will not cover that episode again, as I have done so any number of times previously (just enter “Worthy” as a search term at the top of the page if you desire to read more about it).  Wrote I at the time:

It is amazing what a little negative publicity can do. Within hours of my letter to the editor appearing in yesterday’s Banner-Herald, the HTML version of the CCSD’s “Facts & Figures” had been extensively revised and the PDF version had vanished altogether . . .

That quote is from a blog post of 28 months ago.

My latest column, printed Sunday, similarly noted that “the information given on the ‘Facts & Figures’ handout included in participants' folders is different in almost every respect from that given on the analogous page of the district's website.”  This, predictably, prompted a wholesale revamp of the web page in question on Monday.

Yesterday morning, the web page included a notation that it was last updated in August of 2010.  Some information on it may well have been.  Most, however, had not and some was years out of date.  And yesterday afternoon, the information appearing thereon changed dramatically.

Why is it left to me to prompt these revisions?  The updated page notes that the CCSD has 2848 employees (an increase of about 700 in one day, mind you), but the information on its web site gets to be years out of date (for example, the per pupil expenditure figure on the site earlier today dates from FY 2008, which began almost 4 years ago).

Does not any of this multitude of employees ever review or update the information presented on the CCSD web site?

By the same token, does not the local news media ever review or ask questions about such information?

Apparently not.

These are questions that someone besides me needs to be asking. If the data presented by the CCSD is consistently inaccurate, how is the public to make reasoned decisions as to local education policy?

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Impertinent Observations

Now that I have the new gig over at the Banner-Herald, posting may be somewhat sporadic here at TOA.  Even so, I am not technically a shill for the corporate masters at Morris Communications.  I am, instead, a freelancer writing under contract to the folks at One Press Place about whatever attracts my interest.  And we all know what that usually is.

New mayor Nancy Denson has named new chairs to the commission’s two standing committees.  Says Blake’s article:

Under former Mayor Heidi Davison, the two super-district commissioners - most recently Hamby and Girtz - chaired the committees because they each represent half the county and, at least theoretically, have broader interests and larger constituencies than the eight regular commissioners.

Davison organized the two committees in 2003. Government Operations vets internal government policies like sidewalk construction and fees for recreation programs, while Legislative Review considers proposed laws. Each has five members and, while the chairmen run the meetings, the mayor assigns the issues the committees tackle.

As the article makes clear, chairmanship of either committee is an administrative task, not necessarily a policy-making one.  Even so, I appreciate former mayor Davison’s rationale for naming chairmen.  On the other hand, if Denson was intending to send a message that her administration was going to be more centrist, just as her campaigned promised, this was a good place to start.

On another matter, once again I was ahead of the curve.  Close on the heels of this column from last Sunday in which I lament the land acquisition practices of the Unified Government, we discover that City Hall is going to buy even more land for the SPLOST-funded “tennis center,” which has turned into nothing but a money pit.

I posted what appears below over on the Banner-Herald comment board, quoting from the article:

Although county officials had said they did not have money to buy land for the tennis center, they said Tuesday that the deal is too good to pass up. Cornerstone is asking $240,000 for the property, well below its $362,000 assessed value and the $2.2 million the YWCO wanted for 9 acres off Research Drive.

And:

Still, the purchase will push the tennis center's cost to $3.1 million, and only $2.3 million in sales tax revenue is budgeted. Other funding will include $240,000 from a contingency fund and $430,000 in interest from the SPLOST program, Reddish and Leisure Services Director Pam Reidy said.

So we don’t have the money within the existing tennis center budget to build it on land the Unified Government already owns, but we have money to purchase additional land on which to build it?

So if City Hall buys the property for “well below” its assessed value, will the assessments of neighboring property owners be reduced to reflect this new market value?

So, given the years of angst that has accompanied the design and placement of the tennis center, we will overcome legitimate concerns as to the desirability and utility of whatever is built by simply throwing more money at the damned thing?

Go ahead, keep telling me how frugal City Hall is with my tax money.

Addendum - see the Banner-Herald article for scads of comments

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