June 13, 2007
Transparency in Taxation
As noted earlier, Councilman Reagan Dunn recently proposed the "Transparency in Taxation" ordinance, to mail all county property owners an itemized statement detailing what their property taxes are spent on. A great idea.
The proposal was heard in committee yesterday (Real video @28:00), with no action taken yet.
Committee member Larry Phillips expressed his support, subject to tweaking certain implementation details which Dunn is amenable to. But Chairman Larry Gossett only kept pouring cold water on the idea, worried that taxpayers would be [I paraphrase] too stupid to realize they were receiving an informational statement and not a bill (even if it says "NOT A BILL"), not interested in seeing where their taxes go, and too stupid to understand the information anyway; He's also convinced King County won't be able to produce these statements, even though many other counties do.
As usual, Gossett (nominally my representative) ignored my request for a comment. One gets the impression he's simply averse to transparency.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 13, 2007
11:49 PM | Email This
1. How could no action have been taken? Are the Democrats trying to table this to kill it? When is the next committee meeting? Gossett tries to imply that no one cares about this information. I propose that anyone and everyone who cares about knowing exactly where their taxes are going show up at the next meeting to let Larry know exactly how we feel about this!
2. We have a similar situation in Woodinville. The city council is prioritizing tax money ($6.6M) to astroturf an existing park instead of fixing streets and staffing emergency personnel. If the residents saw the expenditure in writing they would probably vote in November.
3. Well there are people who try to cash those fake checks that say "not a check on them" and people will give their life savings to a Nigerian who sends them an email so paying a fake bill does not seem to far off. Personally I just think its a waste of money. The information is available for anyone who cares enough to exercise a small amount of effort.
4. Giffy--
It's government's job to keep people informed. A lack of accountability about where $$ are spent is one of the most serious problems we face on a Federal, State & Local issue.
I applaud Dunn for pressing this forward.
Gossett is an idiot....but then everyone knows that but him!
5. The issues of accountability and Dunn's proposal are separate issues. I fully support making just about everything accessible online.
Personally I think you can get much more mileage out of using the money to improve the County's website, then to send every household in the County something every year. King County has just over 700,000 households and half have their mortgage company pay their taxes.
I'm not sure if KC qualifies for non profit rates, if so it would be about 11 cents a piece if not it would be 20 c. Thats between 35 and 70k a year just in postage. Add printing and staff time and your up over 150k. Thats enough to hire a couple more staff or a private company to improve the website. That would improve transparency in many more areas.
6. That is money well spent, Giffy. Getting that statement gives a feeling of "vesting". Whether I read or understand the whole thing isn't the important thing- it is the "vesting" or "committment" to the government mainfested in a statement that I think is important.
I only started reading mine a few years ago. However, getting that notice let me know I was a contributor.
Along those same lines, I think everyone should pay federal income tax- whether it is $5 or $5 million. It "vests" the individual. It also should shock the payers into looking more closely into who they are voting for.
Yes to the statements.
7. 150k? Dunn brought up some good points: We're spending 100k on boxes at the courthouse! We're also spending millions of dollars to refinish the floors and roofs there. Don't you find it a little sad that the Council chooses to improve their own place of work for ten times the amount that it would take to keep citizens informed of how their taxes are spent?
8. Every company I have investments in sends me a quarterly report telling me the details of their business. The law requires it. If the government thinks it is important that I get informed by a business that I have a tiny percentage of ownership in, why would they be be averse to requiring THEMSELVES to give a similar accounting to all involved parties? And note, the government just needs to to do annual reports, while a company must do it quarterly. Sure I can go to the web page, but the government thinks that is not good enough. Giffy thinks it is. maybe he can tell the government to stop putting such onerous requirements on businesses and tell the investors to go on line and look it up for themselves if they want to know what is going on.
Many companies work to save the cost of printing out these reports by giving their investors email options. The government can do the same.
9. "...and too stupid to understand the information anyway..." Gossett? the same guy thinks we're also too stupid to forget his past? a radical with fist in air preaching with the Black Panthers? not exactly a group who distributed Gideon bibles to hotels, eh?
yep. guess we are stupid. stupid to have elected the likes of him at all.
10. manufacture votes = yes
manufacture tax statements = no
That's funny in a sad way
11. Reagan came up w. another solid, common-sense idea. It is unfortunate that the KC Council remains so overtly partisan that common-sense ideas don't meet with open minds who are actually looking for good public policy. Disappointing (but not surprising).
12. I'm really surprised that Dunn would be for creating more useless bureaucracy and actively contributing to wasting taxpayers money in the name of transparency.
This idea is a joke at best.
13. Cato, you're engaging in sarcasm, right? There is nothing bureaucratic about letting taxpayers know what their tax money is being spent on. Are you afraid they might object to some of the money being spent on pet projects? Afraid taxpayers might demand more accountability in the budgeting process?
As someone else said, you get regular statements from your bank or your mutual fund companies. Why should you expect less from the government that is taking a big chunk of taxpayers' money?
Bill H