Does the Legislature just not trust county governments? Yesterday Senate State Affairs killed Senate Bill 105, a measure that would have given counties a remarkably limited taxation power. SB 105 offered counties the opportunity to impose up to a one-half percent non-ad valorem tax, essentially a sales and use tax. Counties could use that tax strictly for capital improvements: “the construction, renovation, improvement, remodeling, alteration, addition to and repairing of courthouses, jails and other necessary buildings not provided for under the existing sources of revenue or budget.” County commissions could not unilaterally impose this tax; any SB 105 tax would automatically go to a public vote. Counties would also have to set a sunset date on any SB 105 tax, and any renewal or extension would also have to survive a public vote.
Certain uses, certain time, only with voter consent—that’s a more restrictive tax power than is applied to most other state and local taxes. Prime sponsor Senator Ried Holien (R-5/Watertown) described himself to his fellow Senate State Affairs members as a “low-government, low-taxes guy,” but said that the counties have a “desperate need” for funds to fix their jails and courthouse. Senator Holien said he offered SB 105 in part to compensate counties for the unexpected costs shifted onto them by the 2013 criminal justice reform of Senate Bill 70. Yet the only committee member willing to join Holien in supporting even that meager revenue opportunity for counties was Democrat Bernie Hunhoff (D-18/Yankton).
SB 105 joins the broader one-penny county sales tax offered by HB 1006 in the dustbin of proposals for county taxation power that the Legislature just can’t stomach. The counties may still get some additional revenue from Senate Bill 2, which has advanced all the way to the opposite chamber and which requires the state to give the counties a share of existing alcohol tax revenues.
But the Legislature does not appear to trust counties to impose their own revenue solutions. County commissioners, how do you feel about that?
What was denied was the democratic right to vote for taxation at the county level. In other words, the Republican dominated legislature doesn’t believe in small government.