French poet Paul Valery once said,

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."

We know all too well how true this is in the Federal Government. The whole “Crashing the Gate” concept is built around tearing down walls between regular citizens, our elections and our government. That, however, is not the only place we are prevented from “taking part in affairs which properly concern us.”

In no political arena is Valery's anecdote truer than in North Carolina counties where populations are multiplying, water supplies are thinning, schools are bursting at the seams and other services are either held together with duck tape and bailing wire, or held up by credit.

Local regulation, building ordinance and infrastructure is local government’s burden. It doesn’t appear on the surface to be a statewide issue, but it is. Local government is fiscally handcuffed by NC law. Local governments in North Carolina have one revenue generating tool in their box -- property tax increases. All other means of raising money have to go through the State Legislature; impact fees, transfer fees, sales taxes, etc. Counties that surround high growth cities like Raleigh and Charlotte find themselves in particularly tight spots under this system of management. These counties are growing at alarming rates.

According to a United VanLines study, it seems everyone is coming to NC.

And most of those “everyones” are coming to a double hand full of counties in NC. Union County, NC is the fastest growing county in NC and one of the fastest growing county in the nation. Johnston County, NC is the 4th fastest growing county in the state, and one of the fastest growing in the nation. Both counties have some industry, but for the most part, we are “bedroom communities” full of workers who drive 0.5 to 1.5 hours to work every day; Union for the banking & financial services industry in Charlotte, Johnston for the pharmaceutical and engineering research and development industry of Research Triangle Park. It is services and infrastructure in these bedroom community regions that are buckling under the strain.

NC County Commissioners, as a group, recently requested more money raising options from the NC Legislature. A special NC House committee has its recommendations in the matter:

Last week, the House Select Committee on Public School Construction Needs scrapped from its draft report a proposal that county commissioners be authorized to impose impact fees and adequate public facilities fees on developers along with real estate transfer taxes on property owners.
"I don't think we should pull out one particular group of folks and say, 'OK, you're going to be responsible for schools,'" said Rep. Julia Howard, R-Davie, who made the motion to strike the fees and taxes from the committee's recommendations.

A request to give local governments the full tool kit of options they require for addressing “the affairs that properly concern them” has been slashed. They recommend giving County Commissions only one additional option -- a half cent sales tax.

That is horse hooey.

Rapidly growing counties NEED the option by right to levy impact fees when new growth strains school, water and sewer capacities. They need an option by right to levy transfer fees when growth is so rapid that sewer spills, educational cottages and water restrictions are the rule rather than the exception. For Union, Johnston, and several other counties across NC, it just makes good old fashioned common sense to spread the responsibility for building public facilities out to all citizens. Yet all we get from the Lege is a half cent sales tax. Pfft. That’s like throwing a drowning woman flippers and a snorkel.

Come on, guys, gals, wake up. Break’s over. Shake the cobwebs out.

It is not every resident who causes the need for rapid infrastructure expansion. It is RAPID GROWTH which causes the need for RAPID EXPANSION. Growth should pay for that expansion – fair and square, plain and simple. Why, oh why, is simple logic so hard for smart people to understand?

But there they sit up in Raleigh, (working hard, no doubt), while out here in the provinces local governments are sending urgent distress signals and all the Lege can do for them is a half cent sales tax?

My, my, my, but money waved under the political schnozzle does cloud the brain, does it not? To be sure, the big money got what it wanted. Campaign coffers were very generously lined with Realtor and Homebuilders Association dollars in 2006. Indeed, I would venture to guess that it is times like these that make politicians quite happy to be in politics.

Yes, little people, the Lege looked at the spreadsheets and determined that us little folks just do not add up to much. You see, the money men make themselves useful. You could take lessons from them. They dump truckloads of Benjamins in Legislative laps while us little people do what? – vote? Pssh. Yeah ... in two years. Who the heck will remember this issue in two years?

Well, Lege, I don’t know the answer to that, but here's a hint: the problems created for local governments are not going away any time soon. I'll even stick my fat little neck out and say those problems will still be here, in spades, in a year and a half. I can tell you this straight out, though – us little folks far outnumber big money and yes, we do indeed vote. I’ll tell you this, too. We’re tired of voting on bonds for necessities we knew we would need ten years ago. In fact, we’re sick and tired of it. Oh, we'll keep passing them. You've got us over a barrel and you know it. Our kids have to be educated and we still need schools. But we're just going to get madder and madder about it. Sure, bond interest rates are low – so? The bonds we sell are enormous. Low interest rates on hundreds of millions of dollars adds up to millions of dollars of tax money going straight to a banker’s profit sheet. That’s millions of dollars that is NOT going towards building schools or parks or water facilities or sewer plants or anything else we and our children can use.

A sales tax? Adding a half cent sales tax is a last resort option. It is fine as a temporary measure in a budgetary emergency, but it should go away once the dire need that instigated the tax is remedied. In one swoop of the pen, the NC Senate made an additional sales tax a County Commission’s only option. And please ... speaking as a single parent who earns below the median NC income, don’t even get me started on sales taxes. No matter how slight, additional sales taxes require that some of us who already spend all our money on necessities now spend even more on those same necessities. Why is it that some people define “truly fair” as making sure the littlest, poorest of us get the shortest end of whatever stick is being fought over?

At the risk of being redundant:

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."