CITY TAX SHOULD BE PROGRESSIVE BUT IT ISN'T

Mayor Frank Jackson’s inaugural talk was uninspiring, tedious and lacking the very essence of what it said it was about – the future.

Jackson offered Clevelanders nothing.

 

We face consistent population loss and job market breakdown. The city’s outlook is dismal. Cleveland has fewer people though more poor people as a percentage of the shrinking population.

 

This is the situation for most Ohio cities.

 

But you don’t see the political leaders of the major cities getting together to find solutions. They should be a powerful political coalition.

However, they seem to be each drowning in a downward spiral.

 

They all need money to operate.

 

One solution to the problem of revenue is very, very simple.

 

Get it from those who have it instead of from those who don’t.

 

What a novel idea.

 

Jackson’s fee tax on garbage is an example of uninspired thinking. Same as his traffic lights as revenue raisers.

 

But those “solutions” are easier than a real answer.

 

How can cities raise more money? They have to get the Ohio legislators to pass authorization that allows the cities to tax on a progressive basis.

 

What a novel idea.

 

We cannot keep going to those who have less and least for more revenue. That has been the process with sales taxes and sin taxes, garbage and other fees, and traffic tickets.

 

What the cities need is a progressive payroll tax, not the income tax that now exists where everyone pays the same rate. For wealth people a 2 or 3 percent payroll tax isn’t a burden. For a family on a limited income, it is a burden. It’s a hardship.

 

Where is the politician who will sell this state-wide, among cities and their political leaders?

 

Why should LeBron James - just the use the name everyone knows – pay a 2 percent city income tax and Joe or Jane Jones, making minimum wage, also pay a 2 percent tax. On the first penny they make, too.

 

LeBron likely has more income that doesn’t pay the payroll tax than Joe or Jane Jones makes in 10 years. Is that fair? Is that wise?

 

Why shouldn’t people earning big bucks pay a higher than 2 percent tax? Why should someone making minimum wage even pay a payroll tax?

 

I know how much it hurts. I paid city income taxes when I made so little that I paid no federal income tax. So have many, many others.

 

When are urban centers going to take care of their people? When are their people going to demand it?

 

When are police, fire and other public employees – enduring layoffs, low pay and no raises – going to demand that those with high incomes pay a fair share? Why are they willing to give away money that should go to their families to the families of the richest among us?

 

The lack of concern by these public employees amazes me. Don’t they realize that tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are being given away to businesses whose owners are wealthy but pay city taxes at the same rate they do?

 

Here are the top ten cities in Ohio. I ask why aren’t the people and their representatives demanding fair taxation legislation that would relieve the financial crisis all these cities face:

 

Columbus    754,885

Cleveland    433,748

Cincinnati    333,336

Toledo         293,201

Akron           207,510

Dayton         154,200

Canton         78,362

Parma           77,947

Youngstown 72,925

Lorain            70,239

 

Don’t wait for the Plain Dealer to lead this fight. Their top people benefit richly from things as they are. This is the kind of corruption Terry Egger and Susan Goldberg don’t – won’t – see.

 

This isn’t a reform they would favor.