I’m so glad that Republicans are finally embracing redistribution of wealth. Sen. Harry Brown (R-Onslow) has proposed a new formula for doling out sales tax money that would take from the rich counties and give it to the poor. I wish they felt the same way about helping people, especially those who got hurt in the recession.
With my rural roots and populist bent, I support Brown’s proposal, or something similar to it. Over the past thirty years or so, our rural counties have taken a beating. Globalization sent our manufacturing overseas. Changing health habits left tobacco fields fallow and tobacco barns rotting. And every recession since the early 1980s has disproportionately harmed rural counties.
With little industry and a shrinking population, most rural counties without a tourist industry have lost their tax base. Property values are falling instead of rising, so counties must raise property tax rates just to capture the revenue needed to pay for basic services. There’s little left for investments like schools and infrastructure and even less for things like parks and recreation.
Every small town or crossroads in North Carolina has its city. For some people, it’s Raleigh. For others it’s Winston-Salem or Greenville or Asheville. Growing up in Wadesboro, ours was Charlotte, sixty miles away. Charlotte had goods and services we couldn’t get in town. We also went for entertainment. Everybody enjoyed a day of shopping at South Park or Eastland Mall and then grabbing dinner and a movie. We went to concerts at the Charlotte Coliseum or the Double Door Inn or the Palomino Club. We might not have had a ton of disposable income but Charlotte certainly got its share of it.
Forty years later, places like Wadesboro have even fewer stores and services, so urban areas are getting even more of rural folks’ money. With the changes in the tax code, that includes more sales tax money. That movie is now taxed. So is that concert. And so is that big city hair cut. Without some change in the sales tax formula, poor rural counties are sending sales tax money to richer, urban ones.
Besides, we can’t just turn our backs on rural North Carolina. In a changing world, in a rapidly growing state, rural North Carolina gives us our culture and our character. The Bluegrass Festival might go to Raleigh but the music originated in the fields and hollers of the western piedmont. NASCAR might bring a bunch of money to Charlotte but it started with boys running moonshine in fast cars on country roads. The Durham Blues Festival celebrates piedmont blues, music brought to the Bull City by men and women who learned to play and sing in gospel choirs and juke joints way outside of urban centers. All the people who want barbecue from our great restaurants in Raleigh owe a tip of the hat to the folks that started cooking pigs in places like Wilson and Goldsboro and Kinston. And when we need to smile, we can always look at our face jugs from Seagrove, even if we bought them in galleries in Chapel Hill or Asheville.
The engines of progress may lie in our urban areas but our identity is still rooted in the country. We shouldn’t lose who we are. And we shouldn’t give up on rural North Carolina.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
You know, beyond any urban/rural dichotomy, this is a chance (as with nonpartisan redistricting) for Democrats in the legislature to show that they’re ready to back basic fairness no matter if it’s a proposal from the other side. When people pay taxes, that revenue ought to benefit the places where they live and work. Who can argue with that, especially when we’re talking about a regressive tax that hits poorer folks harder?
Now, it’s true that the urban centers have been taking a beating, revenue wise, in the past couple of sessions, between this and the business franchise tax. But the taxes that they’ve been losing are hard to defend, in and of themselves. Keeping someone else’s sales tax taxing people for starting a business and keeping it open both look bad and are hard to defend.
The Democrats in the legislature should offer their support for this, in exchange for a few urban-friendly concessions, such as tightening up charter oversight (so less local education revenue goes to support crackpot excuses for schools) or allowing school districts to operate charters (which would give them greater flexibility in magnet program offerings), or even getting a few urban tax dollars back, by increasing funding for mass transit.
On a purely partisan note, the folks who would seem to take the worst beating on this would seem to be the deep red counties on the edges of the urban areas. In Charlotte, this would be Union and Cabarrus Counties, for example. It seems like these places are where the folks from way out in the country are stopping to shop at Bass Pro Shops, Best Buy, and so on. So wouldn’t these counties be the real losers in this bill?
If you trust the GOP, sure go for it. I for one believe it is just another power and money grab by the GOP General Assembly. Nothing more…sorta like redistricting the Wake County Commission is helping those poor folks in more “rural” Wake County. As for it helping out the Democrats in rural NC ..think twice about that. I seriously doubt that rural NC will be fertile ground for the democrats because of a small sales tax money bump. All of it should be suspect simply by the Republicans wanting to do some redistribution of wealth. When was the last time that phrase came out of a Republicans mouth without a nasty “librul smear” attached? Are you sure it isn’t just another money grab from the “metro” counties so they are forced to raise property tax to meet the county and city needs therefore giving the GOP a political platform to run on and jam down those metro Democrat officeholders throat at the polls. Somehow I can buy that notion.
Are you sure it isn’t just another money grab from the “metro” counties so they are forced to raise property tax to meet the county and city needs therefore giving the GOP a political platform to run on and jam down those metro Democrat officeholders throat at the polls.
—————————-
I was thinking the exact same thing….
Very hard to support this bill given the GOP’s recent pattern of punishing metro areas hard by ending business privilege taxes, by reducing voters’ voice (limiting special referendums; gerrymandering local election districts), and by hostile take-overs of airport and water commissions. Also hard to support it when the GOP is dead set on continuing its opposition to so many things that could truly help rural folk and communities (e.g., EITC, ACA, Medicaid expansion).
Why is it OK to for them to take money away from their own NC urban people/communities, but NOT OK to take a near-free federal deal for Medicaid expansion that would help some 300,000 NC’ers, many in rural areas??
I look at this as another way to water down the power of Democratically controlled, progressive urban centers. Because with Republicans, it’s all about politics. Why would anyone even think it is about ‘fairness’ for rural areas or anything such as that?
Although a good idea, I think it’s misdirected. County-level assessment is too limiting. Moore County, for instance, has a largish base of well-to-do retirees in Pinehurst and Southern Pines. That makes the whole county look prosperous when the majority of the county’s residents are in needy rural areas.
Finer-grained census data could more equitably spread funding to lift a greater number of rural poor.
Democrats all too often neglect the needs of rural counties because so many of us are urban dwellers out of touch with, or even contemptuous of, the “country folk.” This is not only unjust, it also does tremendous damage to the party politically in the State.
I have relatives in Sampson County, which has been devastated by agribusiness and the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas. The last time I visited the little town in that county where I spent my summers growing up, it was essentially gone!
This bill seems like a good thing for Democrats to support to get us moving in a better direction with rural North Carolinians. It’s just too bad a Democrat in the legislature did not propose it first.
I’d like to see a friendly amendment to the bill that reads counties receiving these funds are not allowed to use them as an excuse to lower their own property taxes/county income in response, but add them to the pot they have. Schools in rural counties are in need of repairs, in many of our rural counties the largest employer is the public school system–giving those teachers a raise will stimulate their local economy and draw quality teachers to their systems. Use it to improve their infrastructure or to create broadband access for county residents. Things that can draw at least small businesses to their locality.
I see this as mere political theatre unless democrats embrace the opportunity to enhance their standing in rural areas by supporting the bill.
The powerful big city republicans will no doubt oppose the bill, giving democrats a superb opportunity to gain rural confidence statewide.