Most of us here, and to judge from the poll Ray and Dan sponsored, most of the city, believes that we should not be cutting taxes when our services are being reduced so much. We should be, at least temporarily, delay the wage tax cuts.
But what do you do when the strong mayor of our city totally disagrees and when the members of City Council who, in addition to having the usual disinclination of politicians to raise taxes, are also disinclined to pick a fight with the Mayor in his first (of most likely eight) years in office.
Where do we get the leverage to move the debate in the city. The poll helped, but what do we do now?
For one thing, we can keep pointing out that the rationale for cutting taxes–to influence the location decisions of businesses and residents–is substantially less important when businesses and residents are by and large not relocating because no one can borrow the money they need to move.
For another, we can point out that cities around the country–our competitors–are raising taxes.
The problem with the second point is that, while I’m pretty sure it is true, it’s hard to know how true. The major sources that collect this information–such as the league of cities–haven’t done so yet.
But the information is available on the websites of newspapers from cities around the country.
So here is a project for the twenty or forty or sixty of us who hang out at YPP.
Let’s each volunteer to track tax and budget decisions in one city and report back here. Let’s see whether, as I suspect, local taxes are going up all over the country.
Too make the comparison useful, it would be best if we could also find information about the total size of the city budget and express the total revenue increase as a percentage of the budget.
Also we should look for evidence that cities are delaying tax increases and spending cuts in the expectation of a bailout from the feds something else Dan, Ray, and I (and others) have recommended.
If we collect information on a bunch of cities raising taxes, we might be able to turn the public debate here.
After all, our Mayor says he wants to follow the best practices from around the country. So let’s find out what they are.
So report back here. If you have too much information, email the details to me. I’ll try to create a spreadsheet that summarize what you all report.
And to begin with, I volunteer to track San Francisco.