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Board of County Commissioners

Pat DeWine
Reform Agenda

Last November, the voters resoundingly rejected a proposed sales tax increase to finance a new jail. On May 30th, 2007, my two colleagues on the Board of Commissioners chose to disregard that vote and impose a sales tax anyway. The tax imposed is more than $450 million more expensive than what the voters previously rejected, and would add a net of only 400 more jail spaces to the county system.  I support the addition of new jail spaces, but could not vote for the measure enacted by my colleagues.

Hamilton County taxpayers already pay the second highest county property taxes of the 88 counties in Ohio, and with this vote they will also confront the highest sales tax in the region. A recent independent report found that Cincinnati had the second highest cost of doing business of any major city in the nation. The sales tax increase will only make this problem worse.

We all agree that we need to add jail space. Last fall I supported placing a much more limited jail expansion proposal before the voters. After the voters defeated that measure, I felt it was the commissioners' obligation to heed the will of the voters and come up with a proposal that meets the county's corrections needs at a more limited cost. I tried over the past months to work with the other two commissioners to do just that; unfortunately, the majority of this board showed very little interest in anything but a massive tax increase.

While supporters of the plan point to the need for additional jail space, the sad reality is that very little of the Portune-Pepper plan goes toward adding new jail space. Of the approximately $777 million generated by this tax increase, only $190 million actually goes to building jail space. The rest goes to funding a host of costly new programs and county operations.

This significant cost increase is justified by proponents purportedly because of the need to add more social programs. Yet the Voorhis report, so often cited by the tax's proponents, found last year that Hamilton County has "the most sophisticated, creative and complete grouping of alternatives that the consultant has observed."  What is actually needed according to the county's own consultant is not costly new programs, but more accountability and performance standards within the programs we already have.

Taxpayers should be particularly skeptical of the claims that this tax will be temporary. This proposal will put in place a host of new programs costing tens of millions of dollars a year that will not go away in 15 years when the tax will purportedly end.  History and common sense tells us that that once a government program is created it is all but impossible to end. As Ronald Reagan once said, a government program "is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."  No doubt, future county commissions will have little choice but to extend this tax indefinitely to pay for the huge expansion of government that it will create.

The commission offices have been flooded with calls and e-mails from citizens angry with the actions of the commission majority. It's not too late to change course. By law, the tax won't go into effect until Oct. 1. The majority of the County Commission ought to reconsider and at the very least allow the public to vote on a more reasoned approach.