I started out as a community organizer, helping people use their own voices to change policy on the issues they care about. I come from a perspective which asks:
"How will this policy impact ordinary people?"
"Who will benefit?"
"Who might be harmed?"
"Will it allow one group of people to have yet more power over a less powerful group of people?"
I don’t believe in trickle down. I try to look at business issues from the point of view of ordinary people, the consumer, the individual tax payer, wage earner or small business. And where companies are owned by shareholders or large out of state entities, I know the bulk of their dollars are going out of state, so I’m going to be most watchful about how they compete with local businesses owned by Idahoans and whether they will cost Idaho taxpayers more to serve than they will produce in state tax revenue, wages and in state purchases of goods and services from Idaho businesses.
This set of values makes me fairly predictable. This may be a surprise to some but it means on a some issues I actually vote like a conservative, with Lenore Barrett, Mike Moyle or Phil Hart. Yesterday is a good example.
When it comes to letting voters choose to lower their own taxes, I support local control by local residents and where there are safeguards and accountability, I think we have good policy. That’s why I voted with Republicans on the Revenue & Taxation Committee to allow 2/3 of Idaho voters to lower a taxing district’s budget by a limited amount, if the budget is higher than what that 2/3 of voters believe is necessary. Of course, unlike Rep. Moyle, I feel I am consistent in that I also believe that local voters should be able to raise their own sales taxes to fund Public Transportation for example, if that is an urgent local problem they want to fund and solve for themselves.
And while a bill to bring in big companies, even a cool film studio to the desert outside town is a wonderful idea, what happens if the county gives tax breaks and then builds roads and extends fire and sewer and other services and then finds that the facility is built and only employs five people, all of whom are existing residents, being paid wages no higher than they were before elsewhere. Or worse what if the company finds after a year that they can’t make a go there south of town? What happens to the money that local tax payers shelled out to extend county or city services out there if the building sits empty? Where is the accountability? The job targets? The wage targets? The clawbacks to ensure the company has to pay back the tax incentives they were given if they leave before the state and neighboring taxpayers recover the cost of serving the project?
And for repeal of the business equipment personal property tax… Who benefits and who pays? Over 80% of the $120 million tax break goes to a small group of some of the largest companies in the state. Many are owned by out of state entities and are publicly traded so that any tax benefit is likely to go into CEO pockets or to shareholders as profit, not back into wages or benefits or new jobs in the community. A smaller portion of this does go to help small businesses but they together with families will also bear much of the burden of paying for this huge tax break with their sales tax payments and business or individual income taxes. Small businesses are the vast majority of the employers operating in our state. They are the backbone of the economy and collectively the state’s biggest employer. When we shift burdens to them, we put our economy at risk.
Democrats have a proposal to exempt the first $50,000 of value from the personal property tax. This would benefit all businesses equally and we have even proposed paying for it with the reduction of another business tax break so that the cost of the tax cut does not shift and fall on families.
Two thirds of the economy is consumer spending so when we hurt families and individuals by shifting tax burdents to them, we hurt our economy, particularly when we hurt modest income families becasue they are more prone to needing to curb spending when their incomes fall or expenses or taxes rise. When tax policy shifts burdens in this way, I will oppose it. Those are my values. Pretty simple.