There are approximately 573 taxing entities in ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and county that gather hundreds of millions of dollars annually, mostly from property and sales taxes. Yet many face shockingly little, if any, oversight.
A glance at local-government financial data on the website shows dozens of tax districts that have never been audited by a certified public accountant or filed the required year-end reports.
Taxpayers are entitled to know how their money is spent. They have every reason to suspect the worst if government officials ignore their reporting requirements. When officials think no one is watching, they have less reason to spend public money efficiently. For some, lax monitoring is an invitation to raid the till.
Some of the larger taxing districts are independently audited and closely examined on a fairly regular basis, like the , which rakes in about $74 million a year from city and county property owners to fund five cultural institutions.
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It would be reassuring to know that the officials in ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and the county’s 90 municipalities who created the districts — and those who oversee them — are making sure the money is being used fairly and properly.
But in many cases, there is no culture of transparency and little apparent motivation to change time-honored practices that keep the public in the dark.
And because many of these taxing entities are so obscure, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude prevails. Which is probably why they are a popular way to raise and spend revenue.
The civic group , which is studying possible reunification of the city and the county, calls the proliferation of taxing entities an example of the thirst for external revenue that drives these municipalities’ entire reason for existing. And when taxing doesn’t meet budgetary needs, some fund themselves problematically through traffic tickets and court fees.
A municipality itself can approve a taxing entity, including tax increment financing districts, in which property taxes are frozen for a business development and a portion of sales taxes is diverted to fund the project. These projects and special districts can push sales taxes well into the double-digits. Some of the region’s richest municipalities have no property taxes and survive off the sales taxes paid by citizens across the region.
Better Together’s data show that the 16 wealthiest municipalities in ºüÀêÊÓƵ have six-figure median incomes and collected $44.5 million in sales taxes in 2014 — but only $7.3 million in property taxes.
and have flat sales taxes of 7 percent and 6 percent respectively. If that were in effect in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, the proliferation of special tax entities would end. Unification would help create a more uniform tax structure and open the way for greater transparency.
Meanwhile, citizens must be vigilant. After all, it’s your money.