The county’s alcohol sales tax is too low, said county Support Services Director Virgil Moon, who asked the state to allow Cobb to raise it. The cap on the tax has remained the same for 30 years, with the county collecting 0.417 cents per ounce, or five cents for a 12-ounce beer and 22 cents per liter of liquor or wine.
“Obviously, the price has gone up substantially in the past 30 years,” he said. “We’d like to revisit that cap.”
Moon’s proposal, made at the county’s annual legislative breakfast at the Cobb Safety Village, called for a 50 percent increase in taxes to 0.6255 cents per ounce, or 7.5 cents for a beer and 33 cents for a liter of liquor or wine.
Though the money from alcohol taxes goes to the county’s general fund, Moon said it can help benefit county law enforcement, courts and other programs that see cost increases because of alcohol abuse.
“We’re trying to find revenue sources that make sense rather than (increasing) property taxes,” he said.
Dr. Dan Sabbarese, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University and chair of the university’s Econometrics Center, said higher taxes on alcohol do not generally decrease consumption.
Moon wasn’t the only one calling for a higher “sin” tax. Dr. Dan Stephens, chairman of the Cobb & Douglas Public Health board of directors, said the state should look into raising its tobacco tax by a dollar per pack of cigarettes. Currently, Georgia’s cigarette tax of 37 cents per pack ranks 47th in the United States.
Stephens said the state could raise $500 million in revenues in early years of the tax and have $1.8 billion in long-term health care savings.
“This is not questionable or arguable data,” he said. “It is factual, and with what has happened in some other states, the billions and tens of billions of dollars that have been saved in these states in health care expenses has been well-documented, not to mention the improvement in the health of citizens.”
But Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-east Cobb) said the word in the Capitol is that tobacco tax legislation is “dead.”
“First of all, I don’t think there are going to be any new taxes, period,” said Cooper, chairwoman of the House’s Health and Human Services Committee. “I think there are people that are dead set against the tobacco tax.”
Court fees are another revenue source Moon asked to increase. With declining property tax revenue, more than $5 million in technology upgrades have been put off since 2008, Moon said. He asked for legislation that would allow each court to set a technology fee of between $5 and $15 per case to be added on to fines in civil cases in state court, mostly traffic violations. Moon said the money would go toward a separate fund just for technology upgrades.
Each court’s judge would have the right to set a fee amount. Moon said that for every $5 of fines, $1 million a year could be raised.
“The recession has gotten us further and further behind,” Moon said.
As for sales taxes, Moon said the county is losing out on revenue because areas near Cobb’s borders are in ZIP codes in cities in other counties, such as areas of northeast Cobb that are listed as Roswell, as well as areas around the Cobb Galleria Centre that have Atlanta addresses.
Moon said these areas can cause confusion about which county a store is in, which leads to $2.5 million in lost income for the county annually.
Moon said the distribution of sales tax revenue would be more accurate if the state Department of Revenue used the “ZIP + 4” numbers, instead of just the five-digit ZIP codes. This could improve the distribution to 99.5 percent accuracy, up from the current 95 percent.
As for zoning cases, the county’s population growth is poised to increase costs for Cobb, so Moon also asked lawmakers to change what’s known as the “Steinberg Criteria,” which requires counties with populations greater than 625,000 to hire an appraiser to review every zoning application to the county. Moon said this could cost Cobb thousands per case.
Cobb County has about 688,000 residents, according to the 2010 Census.
The county has successfully lobbied the state to raise the minimum population to follow the law twice before, after the 1990 and 2000 Census results were released, Moon said. Currently, Fulton and DeKalb counties are the only counties that have to follow the Steinberg Criteria. But Cobb’s population growth would require it to fall under the law if it isn’t changed. So the county is asking the law to be changed to apply only to counties with at least 735,000 residents.
“It can be pretty significant and time-consuming,” Moon said of bringing in appraisers. “We’re trying to cut costs, not increase costs.”
Regarding the jail, housing state inmates is a drain on Cobb’s finances, Sheriff Neil Warren said, seeking a greater reimbursement for daily expenses.
The Cobb Adult Detention Center currently has 386 inmates that belong to the state, with 250 of them ready to be picked up. But the state is only reimbursing the jail $22 a day per inmate if they stay in the jail more than 15 days, while it costs more than $50 a day to house each inmate. Inmates in the county jail less than 15 days receive no reimbursement.
“I don’t have a problem if it takes them four or five days, 10 days (to pick up an inmate),” Warren said. “It seems like the last 10 to 15 years, they don’t want to build more prisons. But I just don’t think the local government should be responsible.”
Warren said Cobb is also picking up the tab for the state because it has to fund much of the training at the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy, while the state pays for all the training at the state’s other six law enforcement academies. He requested that legislators fund the academy for $500,000 annually.
In addition, the sheriff requested changes in the state’s driving without a license law, which allows for offenders to be found not guilty if they produce a license in court. Warren wants to see the law changed to prohibit people who get their license after they are charged from getting out of a conviction.
Sen. Lindsey Tippins (R-west Cobb) introduced legislation changing the driver’s license law in the 2011 legislative session. The bill was introduced during the 2011 legislature and passed the Senate, but wasn’t taken up in the House after items dealing with the sale of license tags was added. He plans to fight for the legislation again in 2012.
“I think the course of action would be to go back to the original bill,” he said.
As to how the legislative wish list was compiled, Chairman Tim Lee said he discussed the items that would go before the legislative delegation with County Manager David Hankerson and Moon, who had gotten input from department heads. Lee said the suggestions have never been voted on by the full Board of Commissioners in the past, and weren’t this time, but the ideas are taken to them for suggestions. He said commissioners have never rejected any of the proposals.
“The fact is that the state needs to address health care, the state needs to address funding for law enforcement training,” he said. “That’s more important than how the list is put together.”
Commissioner Helen Goreham concurred with Lee, saying the board has never voted on whether or not to support a legislative item during her nine years as a commissioner. She said she was pleased with all the recommendations made to the legislative delegation and wasn’t aware of any problems commissioners had with them.
“I’m sure if any of us had an issue, it could have been brought to the attention of the others and placed on the agenda,” she said.
But Commissioner Bob Ott said he was disappointed that the board wasn’t involved more in determining what legislative items went before the delegation. Instead he said he got the agenda for the meeting less than a week before the breakfast and had to request a fact sheet in order to get more information on the proposals.
He would have liked to have been able to ask more questions, particularly about Lee’s proposal for a partial-penny SPLOST that can be share with the Cobb school district.
“I would have preferred some sort of discussion, maybe walking the halls to see what we wanted,” he said.
Regardless of the issues, Ott sees the legislative breakfast a good opportunity for county and state elected officials.
“The best part is that all the elected officials from the county come together with the state senators and representatives and have dialogue,” he said.
Post a Comment
Follow us on Twitter!