Noxious Fumes

There must be $200,000 to be found in this budget through cuts, to paraphrase county commissioner Bill Williams on Monday night.

Hello?

Overburdened taxpayers have been saying the same thing - on a larger scale, in terms of dollars - for years ever since commissioners began to pocket all that loot from the real estate run-up that punctured mid-decade.

Commissioners were debating Monday whether or not to add five additional cents to the six cents the county already levies in gas taxes.

The additional gas taxes are among three potential taxes - in addition to a small county sales tax and franchise fee for utilities, the latter apparently going by the wayside for this year - that commissioners have been wringing their hands, or is it squeezing each taxpayer penny, over for at least the last several weeks.

On Monday night, the commission failed to put itself in position to impose the additional gas taxes come January and the debate over the issue was informative for any voter desiring to understand whose interest government really has in this employer-employee relationship.

The five cents will not be imposed because a super-majority of commissioners, four, did not agree with imposing such a tax.

Interestingly enough, two of the commissioners who initially expressed the most reluctance to the additional five cents as tax prices rise, Warren Yeager and Billy Traylor, apparently had their reluctance brushed aside as they voted for the additional five cents.

They were joined by Commissioner Carmen McLemore, but Mr. Williams was a no from the outset and in the end the commission chair, Nathan Peters, Jr., also voted against the tax.

Before moving on, first a word to the cities, because county commissioners were not the only ones desiring to stick their fingers back in the public's pie on this bit of taxation.

They would not have been able to proceed without agreements from the cities of Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka  - considered at a special county meeting several weeks back to be the biggest obstacle - and shame on the commissioners representing those cities for even going along with this little bit of Kabuki theater taxation.

And before completely leaving the cities, let their commissioners don the label of enablers, no more entitled to criticize the county for its spending and taxing patterns than those working in this heat wave can blame the weatherman.

The initial logic county commissioners used in putting themselves in position to assess (as if the public is so confident in commissioners' fiscal responsibility), was to relieve the burden of ad valorem taxes from property owners.

This belies the county's own figures, or at least those presented by the budget committee appointed by commissioners.

That logic also belies the presentation made by the county administrator in mapping out the commissioners' options, for lack of a better term, to soak an already soggy public.

Of more nuance in this debate, though, is that commissioners changed the argument by Monday, since they must now come up with almost $200,000 a year for the next five years because they took what could be fairly labeled the cheap route when they extended and compounded the county's long-term debt for $1 million in road bond money several years ago.

Those bonds have been downgraded and the short of it is that the county must now come up with the surety, or collateral, for those bonds.

That debt now falls on taxpayers because of commissioners' desire to spend while the spending was good, no more, no less.

And because despite Mr. Williams' statement, which was surely the most accurate of the night, he will get little support on this board for facing facts and making the spending cuts required to remove even a bit of the burden off taxpayers.

It is almost laughable to read about constitutional officers going before Bay County commissioners this week to plead cases for their budgets when one considers that in Gulf County, constitutional officers are pretty much operating with the same staffing levels they had 10 years ago.

Only the county can not follow suit.

As the budget committee noted from the outset, unless commissioners adopt the committee's recommendations for cuts and find another $1.9 million to cut - that just to maintain the same millage rate - taxpayers will absorb another hit, in a year in which property values are likely to fall as much as 25 percent.

Commissioners are simply playing the feint and duck game they have the past few years to avoid hard choices.

Far easier, these commissioners have found, to simply implement the kind of taxes, like sales taxes, gas taxes and franchise fees passed onto customers, that fall out of proportion on those most struggling in this economy, while maintaining property taxing levels.

There is an old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The only explanation for the way county commissioners continue to do business, as if immune from the forces buffeting their employers - the voters - is they've been corrupted by the power conveyed, over time, by the lack of county-wide voting and being allowed to answer to an absolute minority of voters.