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Read the article at the Daily Montanan by Keila Szpaller
excerpt:
“Measuring government budgets is not a proxy for measuring taxation,” Slotnick said.
Local government also operates under a cap set by the legislature; it can’t raise taxes by more than half the rate of inflation. But Slotnick said that math doesn’t work when the county goes out to buy, say, new sets of tires for its deputies.
He said new growth sits outside that cap, so the county must “grow or die.” But new growth also doesn’t pay for itself, Slotnick said: “You see the riddle, right?”
This year, however, even if the county said it wasn’t going to increase its budget at all, Slotnick said people’s property taxes would still go up. He said that’s because of the burden shift onto residential property taxpayers by the legislature.
Slotnick said one morning outside a local bakery, a man holding a coffee and a pastry recognized him and quizzed him.
“What do you guys even do?” Slotnick said he was asked.
Slotnick said he ticked off some examples from that very moment: The water used to brew the man’s coffee was clean, the kitchen that made his pastry was inspected, he was standing on a sidewalk stamped 1931 thanks to the foresight of local government, and the adjacent street had sewer and water and broadband utilities underneath.
“The problem here is local government has been great — and invisible,” Slotnick said. “We’ve come to believe that our safe, secure, predictable high functioning society is our birthright as hardworking Montanans.”
But he said it’s no one’s birthright. Rather, he said it’s a conscious decision that people make to come together and share resources to create a place.
“That’s local government, and that’s taxes,” Slotnick said.” (emphasis added)