May 25, 2010

Council and the Mayor Make Bad Choices on City Budget

There Was Another Way

By Stan Shapiro

City Council and the Mayor had different ideas on the budget this year, and unfortunately they were all bad. Last Thursday City Council enacted a 10% increase in the real estate tax, and then rejected Mayor Nutter’s call for a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. In turn the Mayor said he would have to cut $20 million from the budget, which will require slashing 339 jobs from the Police, Fire, Library and other City departments. Without such cuts, he said, the City would literally run out of money some time in the next fiscal year.

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Reforming the BPT is a better way to Raise the Funds We Need

This is a bad situation, made worse by the joint refusal of the Mayor and Council to even consider a progressive way to raise money for the budget that would have forestalled the deadlock and the crisis. The Coalition for Essential Services (CES) has offered a proposal that would restructure the Business Privilege Tax (BPT) in a way that would impose a far greater portion of the tax on big and out of City businesses while, at the same time, raising $75 million annually. CES has a detailed description of its proposal on its website.

This year’s budget cycle is over, but CES is pledging to return to the effort to restructure the BPT next year. To show its seriousness, it has put up an online petition that it is asking us all to sign and send to City Council and the Mayor now. Please sign the petition and let our elected leaders know that resorting to regressive taxes, and cutting services, is intolerable in a City that is hurting more than enough already.

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