The foregoing is intended as a brief outline only. Even though the various sales taxes mentioned
above are all variations of the same general concept, the legal structures and
technicalities governing each vary considerably insofar as duration of the tax,
on what the revenue may be spent, and how the sales revenue is to be
distributed, etc. In fact, this is
another of those instances when I could have penned a good comparison and
contrast of the various local option sales taxes, but such a thing would have
come in several times longer than my target of 750 words. Be that as it may, those who so desire can
employ the links below to learn all that they may desire about the subject (and
then some).
In addition to the 4% sales tax collected by the State of
Georgia, four other 1% optional sales taxes may be collected at the county
level (excepting the MARTA levy unique to the Atlanta area) and a fifth may be
collected at the special transportation district level, though not all can
operate simultaneously.
A county may levy "up to two" local option sales
taxes, but this limit only applies to 1) LOST, 2) HOST (a county cannot have
LOST and HOST both, and 3) SPLOST. ELOST, levied for the benefit of a school
district, does not county against this limit, thereby making the limit three in
a practical sense. Even what some of these taxes cover can vary by county
depending on when they were enacted by the county in question. And, of course, TSPLOST is on top of all of
these and is unaffected by any limit on county-level optional sales taxes.
According to the Georgia Department of Revenue, Sales and
Use Tax is defined as “a tax upon the consumption of tangible personal property
and certain services. It is levied or
imposed upon retail sales, rentals, leases, uses, or consumption of tangible personal
property and certain services that are specifically taxed under the Georgia
Retailers and Consumers Sales and use Tax Act.”
The Georgia Supreme court invalidated 1975’s original LOST
statute in 1979, ruling that counties had no constitutional basis for sharing
revenue with municipalities. The General
Assembly rewrote the law in 1979, this time creating 159 “special districts”
through which the program could be administered. Not coincidentally, those special districts
correspond exactly to the boundaries of the state’s 159 counties.
The LOST statute continues to evolve. In 1994, a provision was added requiring
counties and qualified cities to renegotiate their respective revenue
distributions following every decennial census.
This was followed in 1997 by a provision that required county and
municipalities governments to adopt “service delivery strategies,” so as to
eliminate the duplication of services and bridge any gaps that may exist in the
provision of services. Finally, 2009 saw
the introduction of the so-called “baseball arbitration” provision that
enlisted the county’s superior court as a binding third-party arbitrator in
case the parties cannot agree on a revenue distribution scheme. None of these provisions are applicable to
the other local option sales taxes mentioned.
Clarke County’s original SPLOST levy ran for a single year,
from October 1985 through September 1986.
That was followed by a second levy running the four years from April
1988 through March 1992. Following a
three year hiatus, a pair of five-year levies ensued, spanning the periods from
April 1995 through March 2000 and April 2000 through March 2005. Next came a six-year affair, running from April
2005 through March 2011. We are up to at
least nine years with the current SPLOST 2011.
Notice how they keep getting longer and more expensive.
Ostensible control of ELOST levies resides with the county
government as, by state law, a board of education is a “requesting authority,”
as opposed to a county commission, which is a “levying authority; a school
board cannot impose taxes in and of itself; it must request its levy though the
county government.
Clarke County’s trio of completed ELOST levies ran from July
1997 through June 2002, from July 2002 through June 2007, from July 2007
through June 2012. The current levy
extends from July 2012 through June 2017.
The three optional sales tax implemented in Clarke County
have become, for all intents and purposes, permanent additions to the tax
landscape. Yes, I realize that these
levies are ostensibly “optional” (though to my mind the ballot resolution
process is consistently stacked in favor of “pro” votes) and that the voters
have approved them (but only with the consent of a plurality of the county’s
registered voters).
To the best of my knowledge, Clarke County voters have
denied but a single optional sales tax ballot resolution. That happened back in 1993, when a one-year
SPLOST referendum, slated to retire general obligation bond debt on the Clarke
County jail and general obligation intergovernmental debt on the Athens
Downtown Development Authority parking debt, was defeated by the margin of
about 3 to 2. Otherwise, the single
LOST, six of seven SPLOST, all four ELOST, and the recent T-SPLOST ballot
resolutions have all passed here, usually by considerable margins (the T-SPLOST
vote being a notable exception).
O.C.G.A. (See Title 48 – Revenue and Taxation, Chapter 8 –
Sales and Use Taxes):
Department of Revenue Sales and Use Tax Overview:
Department of Revenue Sales Tax Rate Chart (July 2012):
Department of Revenue Sales and Use Tax Historical Rate
Chart (July 2012):
Association County Commissioners of Georgia SPLOST Guide
(March 2011):
Association County Commissioners of Georgia LOST
Negotiations Guide (October 2011):
Georgia Municipal Association LOST Guide (January 2011):
Georgia Municipal Association SPLOST Guide (June 2004):
New Georgia Encyclopedia article on “Revenue Sources,
Local:”
Addendum - And just to gum up the works even more, a school district does not have
the power to levy taxes. In legal parlance, it is a "requesting
authority." It must go through the county government to levy its taxes
for it. That is why the Athens-Clarke County Commission, as the
county's "levying authority," must formally enact the Clarke County
School District's property tax levies. Of course,
according to case law the Commission has no legal authority to deny the
CCSD's requests (assuming that they are made in a legal manner), but
that is fodder for another day.
Sphere: Related Content
The tax should actually be termed TSPROST (R for "Regional") using the accepted convention, but even this would be incorrect. The actual language in O.C.G.A. is “special district transportation sales and use tax.”
The special district containing Athens, that of the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission, was created a half-century ago as a “focal point for regional issues concerning local government and to be a resource for those governments in a variety of specialized areas.” Interestingly, transportation is not enumerated among those specialized areas listed on the NGRC web site.
The amount of revenue returned to local governments will be determined by a formula employing the “LARP factor” ( from the Georgia DOT's Local Assistance Road Program). Per O.C.G.A., 48-8-242(6), this “means the sum of one-fifth of the ratio between the population of a local government’s jurisdiction and the total population of the special district plus four-fifths of the ratio between the paved and unpaved centerline road miles in the local government’s jurisdiction and the total paved and unpaved centerline road miles in the special district.” Centerline means the length in one direction, irrespective of the number of lanes.
TIA’s initial article ominously states that “This article shall be construed liberally to achieve its purpose.” Given our past experiences with SPLOST and E-SPLOST levies, that is precisely of what I am afraid.
Addendum - All of the material that I read in preparation for this column indicated that the situation was the way I described it, or at least that was my interpretation of it because maintenance/paving (or "resurfacing," if you prefer) was lumped in with the verbiage used and not split out into a separately administered category. Of course, this material dealt with TSPLOST as a political issue, not with the details of how various DOT programs operate.
Your comment set me to digging deeper, with the result being a convoluted thing. It appears that DOT funded local government maintenance and paving through LARP until 2010, when that and similar activities were consolidated within LMIG.
From the New Georgia Encyclopedia (2008). “Local Assistance Road Program helps local governments preserve their road systems by funding resurfacing activities. Each year, every city and county in the state is invited to submit a priority list of projects to the GDOT, which reviews requests and establishes priorities for resurfacing. In 2007 GDOT resurfaced 917 miles of roads under the program. Overall, there are 70,013 miles of city and county paved roads in Georgia.” See point number 2 under Support for Georgia Roadways, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/Transportation/....
From the Georgia Municipal Association (2010), “On July 1 the Georgia DOT began accepting new requests for local transportation needs through the Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant (LMIG) Program. Both the State Aid program and the Local Assistance Road Program (LARP) are replaced by the LMIG Program. GDOT held a series of workshops during the month of June to help local government officials understand the new process of applying for funds under the LMIG program. . . The total amount available in the LMIG program for FY2011 is $96 million. SB200 stipulated that LMIG must be funded at between 10-20 percent of motor fuel funds. The amount for FY2011 is approximately 13 per cent . . . While LARP funds were restricted to resurfacing projects, the LMIG program is intended to provide more flexibility and can be used for a variety of transportation improvement projects, including patching, widening, turn lanes, rehabilitation, intersections, traffic signals, safety upgrades, culvert/bridge repair and sidewalk/bike lane improvements that are within the roadway right of way. Parking lots are an eligible project, but priority will be given to road and bridge projects. . . For FY11, there is no match for resurfacing projects and a 10 percent match for construction projects. Money spent on preliminary engineering, right of way, utilities, etc. are NOT counted toward the 10 percent match.” See http://www.gmanet.com/MDR.aspx?CNID=53322.
From the DOT, “Due to motor fuel funds being used for this program only certain types of transportation improvement projects are eligible. Project types include but are not limited to: patching & resurfacing, new location, widening, turn lanes, rehabilitation, intersections, dirt road upgrades, safety upgrades, culvert/bridge repair or replacement. . . LG will be expected to match at least 10% of the construction cost on all projects except for resurfacing/maintenance type projects. LG may count monies spent on preliminary engineering activities toward the 10% match. In addition, monies spent on any construction items not included in the GDOT contract, can go toward the 10% match. See points number 7 and 10, http://www.dot.state.ga.us/localgovernment/FundingPrograms/LMIG/Document....
For what it is worth, I did not find a clear explanation on the DOT web site of how this process has changed over time (that doesn't mean that it isn't there, but I didn't find it).
So, it appears that resurfacing used to be covered by the DOT under LARP, but no longer is under LMIG, and that the percentage of the local government “match” required for construction projects may vary in any given year.
Is what you are saying is that the local government "match" for maintenance and paving, currently at 0%, will go up to 10% if the referendum passes and up to 30% if it does not? If so, then the TSPLOST idea is even worse than I originally wrote.