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Assemblyman
Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, started by urging support for his AB 680, an
“idea” he transformed into legislation that would change the state formula
for allocating future regional sales tax revenues among six Sacramento-area
counties.
As Nick Bollman, Chair of the Speaker's
Commission on Regionalism, noted, the state legislature has displayed a
penchant (since passage of Proposition 13 in 1978) for raiding local
governments’ property tax coffers to balance state books in times of fiscal
strain.
Since then, local governments have had to
scramble for sales tax revenues because their share of property tax revenues is
small and the cost of providing services keeps rising, Bollman said.
That can cause communities to expend time and
taxpayer money seeking to lure new “big box” stores and auto malls, which
are seen as sales tax cash cows for local governments, according to presenter
Judith Bell of PolicyLink. However, local taxpayers may ultimately pay twice
for large new retail developments: through incentive packages to attract
prospective developers, and through life style changes such as increased
traffic and smog.
Bell said other metro centers such as Denver and
Pittsburgh, faced with problems similar to Sacramento and its environs, have
seen business, civic organizations and social justice groups band together to
craft solutions focusing on tax sharing. PolicyLink supports AB 680.
The
measure would distribute increases in sales tax revenues in three ways:
one-third based on the location of the sale, one-third by population, and
one-third to counties complying with new low-income housing and homeless care
standards.
“Smog
knows no borders, and this area will welcome a million new people by the year
2020,” Steinberg said at the forum, held on Cal State Sacramento’s campus.
“If (jurisdictions act individually) and fail to cooperate regionally, the
quality of life that brought me to (live in Sacramento) will have
disappeared.”
Depleted
coffers at city and county governments have caused those entities, according
to Steinberg, to spurn low revenue projects such as housing developments in
order to build new high revenue auto malls and other big-box stores within
their boundaries that generate more retail sales taxes. Steinberg said this
fosters mutually destructive competition among localities, encourages retail
outlets over homes and, moreover, fails to address region wide problems of
affordable housing, traffic and provision of local government services.
Not
everybody agrees however. West Sacramento City Councilman Christopher Cabaldon
suggested that regardless of whether AB 680 becomes law, money matters will
always factor into land-use decisions.
“Wishing
for non-fiscalized land use … is like people walking around the capitol
wishing for a non-politicized budget debate,” said Cabaldon, who is also a
candidate to represent the 8th Assembly District.
Cabaldon
said Steinberg’s bill might encourage local governments to add new residents
to boost the per capita portion of the tax sharing agreement envisioned under
AB 680. Thus, he argued, a “perverse outcome” of the bill may be more
sprawl.
He
added that for cities which have crafted long-range plans based on the current
taxation system, AB 680 might undercut expected future revenue streams and
cause a contraction in local government services or planned capital or
infrastructure projects. For local governments, he said, retail tax dollars
are the only “revenue source that (can) be manipulated to provide great
leaps forward in your community.”
Another
representative of a smaller city, Lincoln Councilman Tom Cosgrove, said the
onus was upon individual local governments, instead of a region or a statewide
authority, to ensure that quality of life priorities were being met.
“If
(individual) jurisdictions don’t do comprehensive planning, they’re not
doing their job well,” Cosgrove said.
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