(This guest post is by Seattle City Council member Jean Godden, chair of the council’s budget committee. The voters’ guide has more information about Initiative 1107 here.)
First of all, the truth squad. I need to address the deceptive messages in those “Yes on 1107” ads. Just to be clear: There is no food tax in Washington State. Period. Secondly, Initiative 1107 is brought to you by the American Beverage Association, the national lobbying group for the big soda companies. The $16 million campaign is THE most expensive initiative campaign in our state’s history, and is funded entirely by the beverage people. Now that I’ve cleared that up, I want to make sure you know how I-1107 will hurt the City of Seattle.
We’ve all heard about the damage Initiative 1107 will do to the state budget. Less well known is the impact I-1107 will have on cities throughout Washington. The non-partisan Office of Financial Management (OFM) estimates I-1107 will cut local government funds by $83 million over the next five years. For Seattle, this will mean a loss of about $1.2 million a year. The city is already dealing with a projected shortfall of nearly $67 million for next year; I-1107 will make an already difficult situation even worse. The 373 local jurisdictions throughout the state authorized to impose a sales tax (such as counties, cities and transit districts), will all take a hit if I-1107 is approved.
While $83 million over five years is a sizable amount of money, it’s only the beginning of the impact I-1107 will have on cities. The state’s budget crisis is even worse now than it was last spring, when these taxes were enacted. If I-1107 is approved, the taxes on soda, candy, gum and bottled water will be repealed, and the services those taxes are funding—such as early learning for low income children; K-12 and higher ed funding; Apple Health funding for low-income children; and maternity support services for low-income women with high-risk pregnancies—will be cut.
These cuts will hurt the most vulnerable people in the state: low-income families, children and senior citizens; immigrants and the disabled. Recently released Census data shows that the total poverty rate in Washington grew by 0.9 percentage points from 11.4 percent in 2007 to 12.3 percent in 2009. Poverty among Latinos, Native Americans and African Americans was considerably higher than the statewide average.
Cuts to education and health care will affect people across the state, but especially so in Seattle, the most populous and diverse city in the state. Already over-crowded waiting rooms and classrooms will overflow, not to mention the long-term negative impacts from lack of prenatal care or an under-educated workforce. As residents lose access to state services, more pressure will be put on cities and counties to make up the slack. Unfortunately, our already-stressed cities and counties will be unable to meet the need. So for the sake of Seattle and the rest of the state—vote NO on 1107!
Great work, Jean.
I still blame you for selling our park land to Chihulhy for $1.
Didn’t you hear? The ‘culture of poverty’ is in again. I read it in the NYT. Time to stop throwing money at poverty and time to straighten out the cultural roots of the problem.
Except there is a tax on prepared food.
Box of a dozen frozen corndogs = Not Taxed
Single Corn Dog sitting under a heat lamp for 6 hours = Taxed
Remember how vital all that stuff the stupid “Latte Tax” was supposed to pay for? Yet we voted it down because it was a stupid gimmick by leaders who refuse to fix what’s really wrong with our tax structure. (We need progressive income tax at the city, county and state level, in place of these punishing sales taxes.)
One of the ways you can recognize this as a gimmick to shore up the budget instead of an honest attempt to fight obesity is that it’s too small of a tax to really make anyone cut down on junk food.
By the way, every time you slap another teeny tiny little incremental increase in sales tax on anything, some corporation somewhere is going to oppose it because that’s who makes shit and sells shit: corporations.
Is there no soda bottling or candy making union who can jump up and play the good guy in the ideological melodrama? Because any shit made and sold has a union somewhere.
You can’t support every single regressive sales tax increase just because, a) it pays for stuff we want or b) some corporation opposes it. Oh, wait, you do support any and every sales tax increase? Do you?
Next budget cycle, there is going to be another “emergency” and another gimmick sales tax increase. It will be so small it will seem almost painless, and it will probably be on some product that isn’t good for you. Planning on supporting that tax increase too? Or is there ever a limit?
@4, 5 – This could be Canada where there is upwards of 15% sales tax (provincial sales tax plus federal sales tax). Quit yer whining.
@3 There always has been a tax on prepared food like, you know, in restaurants and hot dog stands.
Is anyone else getting the irony of this–If the American Beverage Assn. had handed the State $16 million in the beginning we could have cancelled the tax and saved everyone a lot of trouble and expense.
@6 it’s not a sales tax if you call it a VAT or PST or GST or whatever name it is this year.
@6
You’re talking about VAT, not sales tax, even then you exaggerate. And even if you were right, how is that an argument to make Washington’s regressive taxation even worse?
@6, 8, 9
It is a sales tax in Canada — provincial sales tax and general sales tax, that’s what PST and GST stand for. But I don’t think it’s 15% total in any province — it maxes out, as far as I know, at 13% (here in Ontario as well as in the Maritimes). Alberta’s is 5%, the base GST.
Oh, and it’s worth noting that, as a result, we have a functional education system, amazing transit throughout most of the country, the lowest debt per capita in the developed world, and, of course, single-payer healthcare.
Have fun eliminating even more tax base and then passing more Eyman initiatives! Let me know how that works out. (I’m a Washington state expat whose ballot still goes there, which is why I follow all this as close as I do.)
Cow. In the US, the full rate of sales tax is charged for every sale. If you add up the total taxation for every single sale that could have taken place in the process of an item going from raw materials to final consumer, it can equal far more than 10% or 15%. Or it can be very little — it really depends. The point of VAT is that it avoids this cumulative effect. To compare the total accumulated VAT that a consumer pays while ignoring all the sales taxes and other corporate taxes and business taxes (such as Washington’s B&O tax) that were collected on an item before the consumer bought it — well that’s apples and oranges. The whole comparison with Canada is a red herring.
Hey. Ever noticed that our dear leaders always find the saddest poster child they can to hold hostage for their ever-increasing sales taxes? Why is it, exactly, that they choose these particular programs to go on the chopping block if their gimmick band-aid doesn’t pass?
@12 no, actually, that’s wrong.
Many groups don’t pay sales tax. This is what the anti-middle-class tax exemptions do.
You’d know that if you worked for a tax-deductible non-profit in certain fields, the military, the feds, the state, the port, or a county or municipal level government agency.
In fact, a lot of what for-profit firms do is also tax-exempt. Just ask Intel or Microsoft.
Jean. I’m for the soda tax, but you’re crying about a $1 million loss in city funds while pushing a 4-lane tolled car-only tunnel that costs over $900 million in city funds? You just cut an innoocuous $25 head tax that raised $4 million in city funds a year? Fuck you.
PS The city council (hint: YOU) can pass a city-wide soda tax and raise even more city funds.
Isn’t this one of the cases where the state could ignore the initiative and re-impose the tax in two years? If the legislature had any guts, they’d do that effective the first possible day. Which means instead they’ll actually propose a constitutional amendment banning a tax on sugar forever.
I believe that It Isnt’t right for the goverment to do this. They are trying to make use raise our children like they want them to be raised. You can’t tell people what they can and cannot eat.