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Panic in the streets: the car tab argument
Panic in the streets: the car tab arguments
James Vesely
Times Staff Columnist
MORE than five years ago on these pages, a terrific newspaperman was blowing
the whistle on the state's car-tab tax. Columnist Don Hannula, who kept his
pulse on the average guy as much as anyone I ever knew, understood the fee the
state took on car and truck licensing was a powder keg.
It still is a powder keg, not because people are stingy or greedy or just
looking out for themselves, but because it's unfair. That sense of unfairness,
of being taken for granted, of being played as a sucker, is at the heart of
the vote in favor of I-695.
Like many others, I first looked at the initiative and thought it tore the
guts out of government - too much so. If I-695 passes, the consequences could
be pretty harsh.
King County Executive Ron Sims was in here the other day with the county's
budget director and the predictions were, in the language of the moment, dire.
Sims said layoffs of county employees are coming. He said transit pickups -
the number of times a bus will stop for a rider at a bus stop - may drop as
much as one third. A third less bus service doesn't sound good to me. Sims was
sober and careful. I didn't see much exaggeration of the impacts of I-695 he
saw coming. I take the man at his word that services will shrink.
Gov. Gary Locke is worried about the same cuts and on Friday announced if
we'll let the state off the hook this time, they'll fix the car-tab fees. He
says tab fees should be closer to market value of the vehicle, something people
could have told him years ago.
What's nagging me about the arguments against I-695 is that until recently,
all the opposition has been built on the serious impacts coming when the high
tab fees end. You'll be sorry, goes the argument, when you don't have the government
services you need. The other argument is that a vote in favor of I-695 is greedy,
the familiar guilt stanza that accompanies any vote on tax reduction.
I can see the need for a stiff excise tax on cars and trucks. I think most
people would if they were explained, and if the tab fees had a tangible relationship
with real life. They don't now.
As everyone knows, the state places a value on your car or truck that's a
book value, even if you paid less. And as every driver knows, you pull out of
the lot and the value drops like a stone - just like the first one on your windshield.
The state still keeps the book value up to squeeze the most out of the fee structure.
This is tax policy the Sheriff of Nottingham would understand.
Instead of being greedy, as we are being told as if we were children, voters
recently have been remarkably generous with their tax dollars.
People always vote their self-interest, but that self-interest often coincides
with tax increases. Just looking at the past few months, Eastside voters put
up serious tax dollars for their communities. In Issaquah, voters added almost
$70 million to their bills for school capital budgets and another $7.9 million
for technology. Voters approved that by margins of over 60 percent. The Lake
Washington School District passed one of the largest tax bites in its history
last year: $55 million for operations, $46 million for capital costs and technology,
and a whopping $160 million for school remodeling. That's not the vote of cheapskates.
In Seattle, a $156 million central and neighborhood library bond issue was
approved. Most likely, Seattle voters will buy a fancy new Seattle performance
center and neighborhood community centers this November with their taxes. Voters
all over the region said yes to nearly $4 billion of their dollars for a mass-transit
plan. In all, said the July 18 edition of The Seattle Times, the region has
seen an $8 billion investment in tax dollars since 1995.
This is not evidence of Lexus greed. Homeowners are paying more in real-estate
taxes now than ever, but there's no sign of a rising tax revolt.
The pleas - and they are pleading - from leaders of government, the media,
big business and concrete makers is that the system can't go on without the
infusion of dollars from the car tax.
But we can't defend an unfair tax on the basis that it is a cash cow. Dissatisfaction
with the hog-ugly unfairness of the tab fees was as easy to hear coming as a
bowling ball. Whether through inertia or lack of spunk, no one in authority
was willing to get it fixed.
Push away the cobwebs and no matter how you look at the car-tab fees, the
way they are collected is out of kilter with people's intuitive understanding
of household economics. If the fees were stiff, but set according to how car
prices move, we wouldn't be in this mess. As it stands, out of fear of the future,
we are asked to defend a tax intentionally miscalculated.
Don't tell me how bad it's going to be without car-tab revenues; explain how
you defend the current tax. If a tax is unfair at its core, a free people have
the right to repeal it.
James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Monday on editorial
pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com
