Focus Report
Local Tax and Revenues

Our taxing systems of today are slowly dismantling our precious constitutions both at the federal and state levels and are quietly reducing our constitutional protections of private enterprise and private property along with the right to be governed with our consent. If our taxing systems are not changed they will destroy local constitutional government as we presently know it.

The foundations of our taxing systems were once created so we would be governed and taxed by our consent. The framers of our constitution did not like big government with the power to tax indiscriminately. They created a limited form of government with limited powers and responsibilities. They did not consider it right to tax our labor or our work. We were supposed to earn the fruits of our labor in order to provide for ourselves and our families.

As things progressed our federal constitution was changed in 1913 to create an income tax for expanding government purposes. At that time the income tax took 2% of our wages. By 1934 it had risen to 5% until today it consumes 39% of our wages.

The framers of our Constitution stated "The power to tax is the power to destroy," therefor we must limit governments powers to tax for only certain purposes.

Our founding fathers could have never imagined that our government would have grown into what it is today. Today we expect government to do almost everything for us and therefore it has become a massive system to fund. That's why government now takes 50 cents out of every earned dollar we make to pay for its expanded purposes.

Just think about it. We are taxed in our labor, taxed on our transportation, taxed on our purchases, taxed on our water consumption, taxed on our gas and electricity use, taxed on our recreation (hotel Taxes) taxed on our shelter and property and when we die we are taxed as well!

Today I will focus on the understanding of local government finance and those local government entities which are primarily funded with local property taxes. Many of you have told me that you have a limited knowledge of this subject. Then I will report on a few bills that have real taxpayer merits or grave concerns.

The institutions of local government are: cities, counties, special districts and authorities, schools and state redevelopment agencies which are managed by local government officials. These agencies are primarily funded from property taxes. Additional sources of income for these entities are sales taxes, transient occupancy taxes, fees, charges and utility taxes along with some federal & state rebate dollars.

When the property tax was first instituted it was for the purpose of funding the protection of persons and property and roads.

What we are witnessing at the present time is that local property taxes purposes have expanded and are presently funding schools, welfare, redevelopment & economic development projects or business and corporate welfare, public safety (police & fire), toxic waste clean up, roads, jobs & other public social service programs.....along with sports arenas, gambling casinos, movie theaters and other recreational pleasures.

And yes, our property taxes are also funding local governments who are actually getting into business, competing with private enterprise. Have you noticed that government is now in the real estate development and property rental business, in the investment brokerage business, in the insurance and banking business, recreational golf, sports and other recreational and hotel ventures, energy, health and the list goes on. These practices create an un-level playing field and are a direct attack on our private enterprise system. This practice is also in direct contradiction of our states' adopted republican platform which is to promote private enterprise not government enterprise.

A direct attack on our constitutional private property rights is also being funded by our local property taxes which are being diverted to redevelopment agencies and used to take private homes and businesses belonging to U.S. citizens and then giving or selling them to foreign corporations and businesses. We have also built public housing with these property tax dollars only to see that they are mostly filled with non citizens and illegal residents.

My friends, the most destructive government agency dismantling our constitution with its' limited government powers is the locally administered state redevelopment agency. It is also the greatest threat to our local systems of finance so if you don't know about redevelopment agencies I truly beg you to begin a study of their effects on our local structures of government.

Finally our local property taxes are being used to pay debts that our cities, redevelopment agencies, special districts and counties have borrowed to the tune of over $106 billion dollars reported by the State Controller's Office for 1994/95. Of course the totals will be higher by now. These figures do not include interest costs so we can almost double that figure to $212 billion dollars which our local property owners must pay for.

Last year alone, a total of $27.8 billion dollars was issued and added to our local governments debt burden. And what is really offensive is that most of these debts and liabilities were never voted on by local government taxpayers.

Another important fact to consider is that as these local government and redevelopment purposes expand, more and more government owned property is taken off the local property tax roles, leaving fewer and fewer private property owners to pay most all of the costs for these expanded social and other business welfare programs.

Please tell me why our retired homeowners who are on fixed incomes should be asked to pay for all these expanded services and costs through higher and higher property taxes, fees or assessments?

A fairer solution would be to fund many of these other non-property related services through a sales tax where all would share in the funding for their wanted programs.

I hope you can see why it is so dangerous to lower the vote for local taxes or bonds to a majority vote. If the voting limits are reduced it would result in forcing the elderly out of their homes simply through the process of higher and higher property taxes for purposes that were never intended by us or by our founding forefathers.

Another issue for local government finance understanding is that its system of funding has turned into a tangled maze of interlocking webs which collect monies for one purpose and spend it by another agency for another purpose. Until the state legislature reforms our present convoluted taxing system and implements "Truth in Taxation practices" we will continue to see taxpayer revolts and more initiatives.

Its time that we have "Truth and Lending Laws" for our taxing systems where the taxes that are collected are spent for the purposes they are collected for. This will set up a clear and accountable taxing system that can be more easily understood and managed.

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