TAX RELIEF FOR COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES AND THOSE WITH A YEARLY INCOME OF MORE THAN $25,000 DENIED

By election day, November 5th, the Sacramento City Council's Recipient Committee, aided by the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, in opposing Measure T spent about $394,000, mostly on mail-out scare type hit pieces to city voters. The Sacramento Bee remarked it: "may be the most spent on a Sacramento City initiative". This resulted in defeat of the League's effort to reduce the 7.5% Utility User Tax (UUT) to 2.5% over five years. However Measure T's expansion of the utility tax rebate program to all residents whose yearly income is less than $25,000 has succeeded. And thus, as the Bee also related in its Editorial supporting Measure T, "From the perspective of those who depend on the city for a pay-check or a development subsidy, there's never a good time to lower a tax, even one as regressive as the utility tax." So, from those who seek and get the City's largess, the money flowed.

From the outset the League set out to achieve three goals, i.e., get Measure T on the ballot, reduce the utility tax to 2.5% over 5 years, and expand the tax rebate to all with yearly earnings less than $25,000. The first two were achieved before election-day even arrived. The League committed its General Fund to put Measure T on the ballot. On May 23rd the City agreed, tentatively, to expand the rebate for a year in the identical manner proposed in the League's Ballot initiative. The League believes this was done, and advertised, in an attempt to defeat our signature gathering effort. It failed. Over 15,000 signatures were gathered in a month and a half, and Measure T was on the ballot. The financial assault, creating the egregious mailed hit pieces ensued. The Sacramento Bee saw through the opponent's, and the City run charade, endorsed Measure T and urged a YES Vote. Notwithstanding the moneyed assault, the City, knowing Measure T might still pass, on October 22nd, 13 days before the election, passed a Resolution making the rebate program permanent, and heralded the move in its final assault. And the tax reduction, the last of the League's three goals was defeated. But even in defeat, the League, by forcing the rebate issue, won for about 47,000 Sacramento City residents the capability to get the utility taxes they pay returned to them. And on January 1st it becomes law, which cannot be repealed without a vote of the City's electorate. And the rest of the taxpayers and commercial enterprises got nothing, except the pleasure of continuing to pay a utility tax three times higher than anywhere else in the County and the surrounding Cities!

Joe Sullivan, Executive Director

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