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Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Time to ax tax to benefit local officials
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, with his proposal to stop collecting the quarter mill that the state adds to the property tax bills of 2.5 million Georgians, opened a can of worms that should have been opened long ago.
There’s never been any particular justification for the state to collect a quarter mill anyway. Certainly the state has a long history, dating to at least 1851, of levying against property. But with the advent of the 3 percent statewide sales tax in 1951, property taxes were left to the support of local government. A 1952 constitutional amendment eliminated the five-mill state collection, except for that .25 mill, a sum that now costs the average property owner $30 per year.
Rockdale County Tax Commissioner Dan Ray, the immediate past president of the tax commissioners’ state association, believes that “the quarter mill is there to fund the state’s administration of property taxes.” By making tax commissioners collect state revenues — the quarter mill — the state retains authority to oversee tax commissioners and assessors and to set training standards, he says. “This gives them the money to pay for that . . . that’s my understanding.”
The fee collected amounts to $76 million per year.
Wilbur Yaun of Conyers, who spent 34 years at the state Revenue Department before retiring in 2003, thinks the quarter-mill remains so the state could maintain control of auditing, training and maintaining uniformity of assessments at the county level.
There’s another reason as well.
County-level constitutional officers — sheriffs, probate judges, court clerks and tax commissioners — have an independent power base in every county. Since the beginning of time, that has made their statewide organizations a key power bloc under the Gold Dome. What they want, they get.
In 1958, when many Georgia counties were dirt poor, few offered pension plans. Tax commissioners persuaded legislators to allow them to come under the Employees Retirement System of Georgia, which was created in 1949. But to provide legal justification, they had actually to be state employees. And they aren’t.
The quarter-mill is the legal route into the state retirement system. The law states: “The offices of the tax commissioners, tax collectors and tax receivers of the counties of this state are declared to be adjuncts of the Department of Revenue, such offices assisting in the returning and collecting of state taxes.”
For tax commissioners, it gets even better. Most everything past General Assemblies have done that passed as reform included provisions taking care of themselves and the politically connected. So it was with a 1990 law affecting tax commissioners. A law that appeared to be reform included this language:
“No tax commissioner, tax collector, tax receiver or any employee of any such official shall be eligible for membership in the retirement system if such official or employee is covered or becomes covered by any other public retirement or pension system, excluding Social Security coverage and coverage under any county or local retirement or pension system.”
Read it again. This is the law that came about after most counties adopted pension plans for county officials and employees. So while this law appears to prevent double-dipping, the reality is that it made certain that tax commissioners are eligible to participate in both state and local systems for the same day’s work.
The state system treats those tax commissioners and employees as though no other benefits exist. Salaries are based on population and range from a base of $29,832.20 in the smallest county to $109,425.84 in the largest, with supplements that add a minimum of about $7,700 per year.
The state certainly should eliminate the quarter mill, as Taylor proposes, along with the basis for county elected officials to participate in a retirement system created for state employees. Besides, the state has no need for or claim to the quarter mill in property taxes. That taxing authority should be left at the county level to support schools, jails and other local needs.
“The big guy likes big tax cuts,” Taylor told delegates attending this weekend’s Democratic Party convention in College Park. This is not a big tax cut, but it is an important one, because it has the potential to save taxpayers twice.
It could save property owners a few bucks. And it could eliminate any justification for some county employees, including tax commissioners, from double-dipping by collecting two retirement benefits for one day of work.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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