RALEIGH – Local government in Mecklenburg County costs an average of 5.5 percent of personal income in taxes, fees, and other charges. Within the city of Charlotte alone, the cost of local government works out to about $2,100 per person. These are substantially higher figures than in Wake County and Raleigh, as provided in a just-released edition of the By the Numbers report from JLF’s Center for Local Innovation.
I grew up in Mecklenburg County. Now I live in Wake County. With much of my family still in the former clime, I have a pretty good frame of reference for comparing the two jurisdictions. Is Mecklenburg government 16 percent more valuable than Wake government (which costs 4.8 percent of personal income)? By all accounts, objective and subjective, the answer would be no.
A major factor explaining the difference is Mecklenburg’s application of an extra half-penny sales tax to fund transportation programs. If the extra revenue meant significantly more investment in highway capacity and maintenance, promising to move traffic in and around the Queen City at a faster clip than in the capital city, one might be able to make a persuasive argument for the higher tax. Obviously, both communities have inadequate infrastructure to handle the transportation demands of rapid growth in commerce and population. Unfortunately for Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, though, the extra sales-tax revenue isn’t being invested in ways likely to ameliorate traffic congestion. It’s going into a light-rail system that will carry relatively few commuters, many simply induced out of buses, and using tax revenues from some parts of the county to subsidize development along corridors leading downtown (which is often called Uptown in Charlotte, though pardon me for not employing the fancied-up term).
As for the remainder of the difference in cost between the two jurisdictions, city and county property taxes in Mecklenburg average nearly 3 percent of personal income, ranking the county 12th on that measure. Wake ranks 36th at 2.4 percent. It would be difficult to argue, based on test scores or graduation rates, that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, the main beneficiary of local property tax, is more effective than the Wake County system. (On the other hand, claims by Wake partisans to superior performance need to tempered with the understanding that Mecklenburg has a significantly higher share of disadvantaged children to teach, so useful comparisons of the value added by each system are hard to come by). Similarly, using crime and other measures affected by the performance of local government, it would be hard to conclude that Mecklenburg residents and visitors receive better service for their tax dollars than do Wake residents and visitors.
I’m not saying this to denigrate the work effort or personal commitment of public officials and employees of the City of Charlotte or Mecklenburg County. Nor do I believe that all Wake officials and employees are excelling. I’m simply observing that when it comes to local government, you do not necessarily get what you pay for, as the old saying goes (it’s a foolish saying, actually, as it pretty much rules out the possibility of economic progress, which is based on an ever-increasing return on the dollar).
I compare Mecklenburg and Wake because they are now roughly similar in population and economic stability. The By the Numbers report makes possible lots of other comparisons. Here’s the relevant link, so pull down the PDF and have at it. For readers statewide, the message is that local government costs vary across North Carolina jurisdictions, sometimes in surprising ways, so analyzing that variance might well identify useful fiscal policies to emulate – or wasteful fiscal policies to eschew.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.