Plenty of finger-pointing as time runs short on crucial legislation
A group of Macon-Bibb County commissioners appealed to state legislators Monday to come to an agreement on new sales tax legislation, as the county deals with a shaky financial situation.
Commissioners are asking lawmakers to support legislation enabling residents to vote on a 1 percent Other Local Option Sales Tax, or OLOST. Without that extra source of revenue, the county could be forced to increase its property tax rate and reduce services, county officials have said.
And with the legislative session winding down, commissioners also asked Monday for community members to call legislators, especially Republicans, to support a 50-50 split of OLOST revenue, with half used for a millage rate rollback and half for the county's general fund operations.
"We're asking them to look past the partisan issues and come together to pass this OLOST," said Mayor Pro Tem Al Tillman, who was joined at a news conference by Commissioners Larry Schlesinger, Elaine Lucas and Virgil Watkins. "The citizens of Bibb County deserve it."
Macon-Bibb Republicans and Democrats under the Gold Dome tend to agree that the county needs to straighten out its finances.
But what has stopped the OLOST legislation is disagreement on how to let the county spend the estimated $26 million that such a tax would generate annually. The disagreement has mostly fallen along party lines.
State law says that 100 percent of any such tax has to be used to pay for a property tax rate rollback worth the same amount.
Macon-Bibb’s representatives could try to pass a change in state law, but legal and policy questions have made it slow going.
Commissioners say Macon-Bibb's financial pinch is in part due in part to the county budget being reduced by $23 million since consolidation in 2014, which met a 20 percent reduction mandate that the Legislature required.
The county is now trending toward a fourth consecutive year of taking millions of dollars out of its reserve fund.
Last week, the county's financial adviser said property taxes might need to go up 5 mills to cover expenses in the upcoming fiscal year. Property owners were hit with a 3-mill bump in 2017.
"We do not want to have to lay off folks," said Tillman. "We do not want to furlough anyone. We do not want to have to increase anybody else's millage rate. The OLOST gives us an opportunity to help everybody across the board."
Watkins said the OLOST is sorely needed to shore up the budget.
"We are at the point now where we're either going to go broke as a county, which is not an option, or the services that we receive and deliver will drastically change," he said.
Final days
State Rep. James Beverly said that for all intents and purposes, OLOST legislation is dead for the year
“We couldn’t come to a resolution with the Republicans in the delegation around the 50-50 split and making sure that some of the money went to general funds,” said Beverly, a Democrat, speaking at the state Capitol just hours before Tillman’s news conference.
Beverly said he couldn’t “in good conscience” support a tax break for property owners, while everyone spending money in Bibb County, including its poorest residents, got a new tax.
State Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, filed legislation for a 100 percent rollback. He’s not interested in a 50-50 split.
“It’s going out of the boundaries of what is normal when you add a local option sales tax,” Peake said.
He said if Democrats had been willing to agree with his legislation, and voters OKed an OLOST proposal, then county commissioners would at least have the option to subsequently raise property taxes after lowering them. And that kind of adjustment is what the county would have had to do to raise new money.
State Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, said there is still time for some bill to move if OLOST language is amended onto something else. But the disagreement remains.
“We got in trouble with property taxes, which caused the problem we’re having, and I’m not doing a 100 percent rollback when we could do 50-50,” Lucas said.
Beverly acknowledged Macon-Bibb’s budget problems, three years of digging into the rainy day fund to pay bills.
“I think Bibb County put themselves in this position by mismanaging the budget,” he said.
He said county leaders need to spend time with their financial adviser, figure out which way to go on pensions and employee health care, and then get buy-in from the community about what to do.
“I think there are opportunities there for them to really … hammer out a budget, not just green light everything that comes across the table,” Beverly said.
He said he thinks the county could free up millions of dollars if officials standardized employee pension and health care choices among Macon-Bibb departments, and if they looked at “activity-based costing:” setting county fees closer to the actual cost of providing services. He also suggested the county look at the fees it charges utilities for use of public rights of way.
Peake, too, said Macon-Bibb needs to make some budget changes.
“Like any household, like any business, like any government entity, they’re going to have to hunker down and cut some expenses,” he said.
CORRECTION: Information in this story has been clarified. Macon-Bibb County lawmakers could propose a change in state law on how the county would spend money from a prospective sales tax, but the proposal would still need full legislative approval, not simply that of local lawmakers.
This story was originally published March 19, 2018 at 6:14 PM with the headline "Plenty of finger-pointing as time runs short on crucial legislation."