The increase in license plate fees that flow to the counties was sorely needed, but as a Commissioner for close to 20 years I have a little different take on the idea that it is new money. Once upon a time so long ago few people even remember, South Dakota had a Personal Property Tax. People filled out a form declaring how many TVs, appliances, guns and all kinds of other property they had then paid a tax based on these items. It was an important part of a not so diverse tax base for Counties. It was also know as the Liars Tax because who in their right mind would list all of their things? The State chose to eliminate the tax rather than make liars of us all. In doing so it made a promise to counties to replace that revenue from state funds. In 1992 and 1993 there was so much frustration with property taxes that an initiated measure nearly passed to severely restrict them so the Governor and Legislature decided to act. When it was all said and done they had a formula for funding education according to average daily attendance with some variation for larger and smaller schools, not withstanding other special revenue… They also chose to cap the tax rate for counties at whatever it happed to be at the time without regard to whether it may be high or low or may need some adjustment for special projects or perhaps to recover from flood damage to the county highway system. In addition to the cap, they choose to provide a 20 and later 30% Owner Occupied Tax break to homeowners. To help minimize the impact to the state they chose to renege on the PPTR (Personal Property Tax Replacement) deal to the counties. At that time it was about $480,000 to Brown County. Compounded, factoring in inflation it is very near the additional $800,000 Brown County is expected to now receive as a result of the increased license plate fees. So, from my perspective the increased license plate fee is not new money, it’s the state of South Dakota finally making good on the promise broken 20 years ago less the over $10million not collected to maintain our roads since then . Mike Wiese Brown County Commissioner aberdeennews/news/local/capitol-notebook-roads-crumble-under-daugaard-s-refusal-to-raise/article_983cc969-ec24-5f7b-8d4e-270335a9ebd3.html#user-comment-area
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 15:04:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015