“All politics is local.”
That famous quote by the late Congressman Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, applies to the upcoming Saint Louis City elections even more than usual. A number of events have converged to bring what is sure to be a bright spotlight on the upcoming municipal elections – the recent surge of the political right, both nationally and regionally; the continuing problems with the economy and the related policies of the Democrat Party; and the passage this past November of new state laws involving the earnings tax.
Regionally, the GOP did fairly well in the Saint Louis County state legislative elections, with a pick-up of one state senate and three state representative districts, reflecting the similar gains statewide. There were four GOP candidates in the eleven City state representative races, all of whom made respectable showings in losing efforts. However, the Republicans failed to capture either the County Executive office or the 3rd Congressional district, due mostly to a combination of ballot initiatives that brought out a higher than expected liberal voter turnout in both Saint Louis City and Saint Louis County, boosting the Democrats efforts, moderating what could have been even larger gains in the region. But there was a definite resurgence for the Republican Party, which both the regional and national media had declared on death’s door just two years ago.
On the policy front, both the wildly unpopular changes enacted by the Obama administration and the Democrat controlled Congress on healthcare, anti-terrorism efforts, immigration, and economic policy, and the rather moribund administration of Gov. Jay Nixon, have energized the electorate toward conservative and libertarian policies, and dampened Democrat activist enthusiasm – an almost complete reversal of just two years ago.
But the biggest surprise was the passage of the Proposition A, the earnings tax initiative. While the immediate effect is to ban any new locally imposed earnings or income taxes, the longer term impacts are to the existing earnings tax laws in Saint Louis City and Kansas City. The earnings tax effectively now has a “sunset” date, and must be affirmatively voted back into existence every 5 years, beginning with this April’s municipal elections. And it is this issue that could be the Achilles’ heel for the Democrats in Saint Louis City.
Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay and the Saint Louis City Democrat Party are already preparing to mount a massive campaign to re-instate the earnings tax, by using similar tactics employed during the fall campaign trying to defeat Prop A. They’re predicting apocalyptic disaster if the earnings tax fails to be re-approved – massive cuts in the police and fire department, draconian reductions of city services, and doubling or tripling of property and sales taxes. And, in the Democrats’ “zero sum” view of governmental tax and economic policies, they’d be right. Assuming that there were no other way to increase tax revenues to cover the loss of the earnings tax beside raising existing taxes, the city government would have to enact massive cuts in spending. The problem for the Saint Louis City Democrats is that their view of the economic world is just flat out wrong – and has been for over 75 years.
The Democrats will spend the next three months crying that you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip – that there’s no way to realistically generate enough additional tax revenue to cover losing the earnings tax dollars, if allowed to expire. The reality is that there is a lot that could be done to raise additional revenue without raising tax rates. But there’s been no one challenging them on their “facts”.
Currently, there are thousands of abandoned buildings and thousands of acres of vacant land owned by the City as a result of a variety of policies that ended with the City acquiring the titles. None of that property generates any tax revenue. On the contrary, it costs the City taxpayers over $5 million each year to perform even minimal maintenance (and not very much of that). A similar number of properties are effectively abandoned, with the owners paying only a token amount to keep the City from seizing them for back taxes, and giving the owners tax write-offs (depriving the state and federal governments of legitimate tax revenue, as well). The City’s 66 square miles hasn’t changed since 1875, and there hasn’t been any significant new (as opposed to rebuilt) neighborhoods since the 1950s. It needs police, fire, street, sewer and other services for a city that was intended to support a population of over 750,000 and tens of thousands of businesses, large and small – but which currently has less than half of both. Despite large vacant lots and an established infrastructure, developers prefer to try to wedge yet one more new high-rise building in downtown Clayton (even tearing down buildings less than 25 years old) instead of in downtown Saint Louis, where there’s plenty of available land.
The Democrats will point out that the need the earnings tax, especially on people that only work in the City but aren’t residents, because they have to maintain that 66 square miles with only a population of 365,000 and fewer business than the city had in 1900. But the question that never gets asked is “Why doesn’t the city have more residents and businesses?” And it’s this question that trips them up – they simply don’t have a coherent answer. They cite competition from the other areas in the region, or other metropolitan areas nationally. But they never consider that it’s the policies that they have pursued for the last 75 years that initially drove people and jobs out of the city for the surrounding areas, and that keep those people and jobs from coming back into the city.
The Democrats, in the coming months, will be holding almost non-stop “informational” meetings, sending representatives to every neighborhood organization meeting, organizing door-to-door efforts, etc., in order to retain the earnings tax in April. Instead of just letting them present their tale of doom and gloom unchallenged, Republican and conservative activists should call them on their policies at every opportunity.
As I write this column, there is only one Republican filed as a candidate for the March primary elections – Alderman Fred Heitert, the longest serving alderman in Saint Louis City history. There are 13 other aldermanic seats that will go uncontested in April, unless candidates step up and challenge the Democrats and their destructive policies. And the GOP has been given the perfect issue to run on – “Why do we need the earnings tax?”
Republican candidates can show up at every place that the Democrats try to gain support for retaining the earnings tax, and keep hammering on the same points – why won’t businesses of any size come to Saint Louis instead of going to Saint Louis County or other areas in the region, why does the City own so much abandoned and vacant land, why does it take so many government officials and agencies to approve starting a business, renovating a building, developing a neighborhood. If Saint Louis City had a population of 750,000, would we need an earnings tax?
Realistically, I expect that the earnings tax will be retain this April. In fact, I’ll probably hold my nose and vote to retain, simply because, right now, there’s no viable alternative to it, because the Democrats won’t change their spots on economic policy. But we can start hammering away at those policies, starting this year.
Fourteen candidates. That’s all that is needed. If the Tea Party movement wants to be taken seriously, and be more than just a single election “flash in the pan” footnote in history, they have to go beyond the high profile national elections, and get down in the trenches and contest local elections. This one is tailor made for the Tea Party folks. Candidate filing ends at 5 PM on January 7th. Are they up for the challenge?