Stay Tuned

A positive trend to come out of the most recent meeting of the Board of County Commissioners was the apparent acknowledgement by some commissioners that they are actually hearing the public instead of simply paying lip service.

Two commissioners indicated that after getting an earful from their constituents they no longer supported a half-cent bump in the sales tax to fund a $1.5 million complex in White City as part of an effort to consolidate county operations.

The entire meeting was consumed in a shroud of mystery over the issue.

Commissioners had positioned themselves to hold a public hearing and vote by super-majority - only Commissioner Bill Williams had publicly stood against the entire idea - to implement the half-cent rise in sales tax.

But they had scheduled the public hearing, as required by ordinance, on a night when the county administrator was elsewhere attending another meeting, and since he was scripted for the presentation on the half-cent tax, the bandwagon was halted.

And two commissioners said that while everybody was on the subject, they might as well let it be known that the phone calls had been heard and they no longer supported raising the sales tax.

Even though one of those commissioners had appeared on a Panama City television station days before to stump for the bump.

Some flip-flops can be considered a valuable thing. Citizen engagement? - priceless.

What this board is doing considering such a maneuver is another question and the public should be on alert because there are plenty of indicators these sorts of shenanigans aren't in the rearview mirror.

The half-cent sales tax is not entirely in the rearview mirror so citizens should be on guard.

But consider the route to this point.

From the period of 2000-2005 this board increased property tax collections from roughly $6.2 million to over $13 million, feathering their nests with the back-door tax increases fueled by the real estate boom.

That is an increase of just under 150 percent, at a time when the population remained relatively flat and services hardly increased.

Faced with furor from a citizens group seeking tax reform and then dictates from the state pertaining to property tax relief the past two years, property tax collections have slightly fallen to $12.2 million and change.

But commissioners are simply not willing to see the light of reality splashing across the landscape outside the Robert Moore Administration Building.

They have increased and extended long-term debt through a road bond of dubious necessity.

They have added two cents to the sales tax for a hospital for which there has yet to be concrete poured.

They have added a penny to the gas tax well under the radar of most citizens.

Now, commissioners want those who pay sales tax in the county, meaning all of us, to foot the bill for their fiscal binging by consolidating departments.

And while that may be the stated reason, don't count on the ordinance language to hold commissioners to any kind of pledges.

Not only is there no sunset provision in the ordinance - meaning there is no stated date at which the sales tax would end - there is also no language earmarking the money for a specific purpose.

Commissioners, in other words, can say the dollars are for consolidating operations in White City or the Moon and still use that money any old way that strikes them.

But if consolidation is the question - and how it can be when the county can't even craft a work order policy is a question for another day - then new buildings is hardly the answer.

The county has perfectly serviceable buildings for the Road Department, Public Works, Mosquito Control and the other departments the county wishes to put under one roof.

Bricks and mortar aren't the crux of the problem, the padding of the workforce is.

This decade the workforce under the Board of County Commissioners has grown from 74 in August of 2000 to 180 as of last month in 2008.

No other private sector employer in the county is remotely close.

And calculate the math and that increase correlates pretty closely, percentage-wise, to the growth of ad valorem tax increases from 2000-05.

Even commissioners realize that they have plenty of bloat but with a crazed governing structure - single-member districts help feed three of the state's top four counties, including Gulf, in per capita taxing levels - that bloat also represents their base constituency for re-election.

Nobody wishes to advocate the loss of jobs, so better the jobs than the buildings in White City if that's the coin toss.

But the bottom line is that commissioners have managed to dig their current budget bog all by themselves.

There is nobody else to blame for property taxes that have served as leaden balloons on the economy. There is nobody else to blame for a patronage system built to preserve their various fiefdoms and re-election.

Digging from the muck, however, should not occur on the backs of employees used in large measure for political ends or, more importantly, the wallets of taxpayers already emptied due to this very kind of nonsense.