Neal Boortz: The truth about property taxes

By Neal Boortz

For The AJC

I hope you’ve been following the eight-part series in this newspaper by D.L. Bennett and John Perry on Atlanta’s property tax meltdown. This exhaustive investigation is why we need newspapers. You simply aren’t going to get this quality of extensive journalism from radio or TV, and Atlanta’s various magazines are too full of plastic surgery ads and pictures of society-types stuffed into too-small gowns at their various functions to have room for such a report. (Ouch!)

The bottom line here? You are supposed to pay property taxes based on the value of your home. In case you haven’t checked lately, the value of your home has probably gone down. Now, check your property tax bill. Has it gone down? Well, it should have. Trouble is you most likely live in a tax jurisdiction where the political class is so addicted to your money they will go through any contrivance necessary to make sure your tax bill stays right where it is — or goes up.

I have a home in Atlanta. We just got nailed with a 42 percent increase in our property tax rate. Why? Because the city government is, and has been for a long, long time, a bloated and inefficient jobs program for graduates of the pathetic Atlanta government school system — and I used the term “graduates” advisedly.

When the esteemed Bill Campbell was flying the Jolly Roger from that tall building on Mitchell Street, the AJC regaled us with descriptions of how many more city employees Atlanta had per capita than most other major cities of the same size. Well, see if you remember this: Shortly after Campbell took office, he held a press conference. Sitting at a table with Campbell were officials of various government employee unions. Campbell proudly announced to the media that he had just entered into a “contract” with these unions whereby he pledged that as mayor he would never take any action that would result in the loss of one union job. Sweet.

A few torturous years later, Campbell was helping provide employment for unionized prison guards.

And you wonder why the city couldn’t allow your property taxes to drop?

I could spend the rest of this page entertaining and amazing you with Bill Campbell stories (remember the stolen car in his driveway?), but I want to bring up another Atlanta mayor: Andrew Young. Young came up with an amazing idea. Atlanta, you see, owns Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the most important economic entity in the Southeast. However, FAA regulations forbid the city from making one cent from the operation of the airport.

So, Young thought that the city should explore either selling or leasing Hartsfield to give Atlanta property owners some tax relief. Some studies showed that selling or leasing Hartsfield could wipe out residential property taxes for the entire city.

The idea went nowhere.

Why? That would be because Hartsfield was a power base for Atlanta politicians. The people who held the jobs at Hartsfield, their friends and families, represented a huge number of votes.

Political power, then as now, won out over financial responsibility. The city of Atlanta still makes nary a cent from the operation of an even bigger and more important Hartsfield-Jackson.

That’s the true story behind this property tax scandal. Politicians love power, and you gain power by spreading money around.

Lower taxes ... less money to spread around ... diminished power. I think I saw Einstein draw that equation on a blackboard once.

Neal Boortz’s column will appear every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to boortz.com.