RALEIGH – The Fayetteville Observer’s Raleigh correspondent, Paul Woolverton, had a revealing story in today’s paper (see http://www.fayettevillenc.com/obj_stories/2002/jul/n18tax.shtml) about why the House leadership failed in its attempt to pass a sales-tax increase this week. In brief, they fell short in a floor vote because they were counting on two votes from Fayetteville-area legislators that did not materialize.
One of the members is a Democrat, Mary McAllister. One of six liberal Democrats who refused to support the $252 million tax increase, citing its regressive nature, McAllister had talked to Fayetteville Mayor Marshall Pitts and other city officials about the issue on Wednesday morning. The Fayetteville political establishment has long sought the additional sales-tax authority, saying that the presence of Ft. Bragg imposed a unique burden on the city and county due to its property-tax exemption. In recent sessions, the Fayetteville legislative delegation has often been the primary faction behind various sales-tax bills in Raleigh.
This time, though, the would-be tax-hikers lost McAllister’s vote. She told Woolverton that she didn’t buy the argument House leaders made that to vote against the bill as is was to vote against the interests of local governments, including the many Fayetteville officials seated above her in the gallery. If the bill had been amended to be revenue-neutral – that is, to give localities the half-cent tax increase but also to eliminate a half-cent state levy – she would have been a “yes” vote.
“Oh, they’re going to get it,” she told the Observer. “This was a back-door approach, and it further hurts the people who can least afford it, and that was my reason for voting against it. And because I also know that before we leave here they will get their money. They don’t have to get it this way.”
Even if the tax-hike cabal had snagged McAllister, they still would have fallen a vote short. That’s why the “no” vote by Republican Mia Morris came as such a blow – and, apparently, a surprise. City officials told Woolverton that they had left a meeting with Morris earlier in the day thinking that if her vote were needed to pass the bill, they would have it.
They didn’t.
Like McAllister, Morris said she would have voted for the amended bill – and fully expected it to come up before the session ends. Unlike McAllister, Morris will run in November in a very competitive district, where a vote to raise taxes in the midst of economic recession and on the heels of a $700 million tax hike last year would be a hard sell at best.
Great reporting by Woolverton, and further confirmation that Wednesday’s loss, compounded on Thursday by a failed attempt to get the bill reconsidered, occurred because Speaker Jim Black refused to allow it to be amended. House leadership wants cash for the state far more than they want to help localities deal with lost tax reimbursements. Now they’ll have to adjust their priorities and get back to work fashioning a reasonable and affordable budget.