Champaign County government placed a question on this November’s general election ballot requesting a tax increase. The so-called public safety sales tax, a proposal that would double the current 0.25-percent sales tax levied on purchases in the county, would generate revenue exclusively to fund law enforcement and criminal justice–related services, such as the sheriff and state’s attorney’s offices.
The county executive proposed this tax, a majority of county board members supported it, and now the voters will determine its fate. So, what does this thing do? Is this good public policy for Champaign County?
There are two standards every tax proposal should be measured by: how the tax is levied and what that money would fund. On both counts, the so-called public safety sales tax fails.
First, how the proposed tax would be levied: this is a regressive tax, meaning it disproportionally takes from the poor. How? A flat-rate tax, such as the increase on the sales tax proposed in the referendum, is inherently unfair. We know that a dollar doesn’t have the same value to a millionaire as it does to a single mother working multiple jobs.
Yet, under this proposal, residents would be taxed at the same rate on purchases regardless of their income, wealth, or background. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos would pay the same rate as you or I. That is a backwards, ineffective way to provide government with revenue. Not only does it shove a larger proportion of the cost onto the poor and working classes, it fails to capture the wealth concentrated at the top.
Second, what revenues collected from the proposed tax will be spent on: in Champaign County, law enforcement services account for the vast majority of county government expenditure. Other critical offices, like the county clerk, the treasurer, and others, receive pennies on the dollar from our public purse. If we already give such a large portion of taxpayer dollars to law enforcement, why double an already regressive tax to give them more? An inquiring mind might be led to believe crime is on the rise—but this too is wrong.
We know from the city of Urbana-commissioned BerryDunn report that crime in our area is at record lows, with rates not seen in decades. However, even if crime were rising, this proposal does nothing to address crime or its root causes. That is because law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime—it merely responds after it happens.
Continually adding money to law enforcement budgets as a supposed solution to crime is akin to purchasing a huge fire hose to stop climate change. Don’t address carbon emissions, nor the role of unfettered capitalism in trashing our planet—just use a huge hose to put out the fires these root causes of climate change inflict. We should not allow our government to use this same flawed logic in costly, ineffective attempts to address public safety.
The public safety sales tax proposal does nothing to address the root causes of crime. It offers no solutions that structurally reduce the need for people to commit crimes. The vast majority of offenses are crimes of necessity: people taking food, water, and other essentials of life to merely survive another day. Rather than pay a police officer thousands of dollars to arrest that victim of our cutthroat society, I’d much rather pay a fraction of that money to feed and house that person.
When I think about how county government could levy taxes and allocate funds to solve legitimate problems, continually growing and militarizing law enforcement does not come to mind. We have thousands of residents living paycheck to paycheck, hundreds in a permanent state of homelessness, thousands more on benefits who barely scrape by in a semi-livable existence, and an increasingly inadequate social safety net.
For those concerned about public safety, look to the underfunded, diluted, and sometimes nonexistent support systems that government should be providing through taxation to keep people off the street and put people into fulfilling, healthy positions in their lives.
Before my fellow Democrats accost me for disagreeing on this issue: my opposition to the tax differs entirely from the Republicans and right-wing media figures in town who oppose any measure that raises taxes. I would actually favor a significant tax increase—one which would exclusively apply to the obscenely wealthy in our community. That’s revenue I would put toward the programs poor and working people need to survive in our profit-prioritized society.
Until everyone in our community has safe housing, regular meals, medical care, and the other basics of life, I have no interest in exploring tax increases for other projects. I reject the proposed public safety sales tax increase, and instead urge this government to tax progressively—meaning levying from the wealthy, not the working and poor—to fund the basic services all human beings deserve to have in the richest country on the planet. We can do better, and those with the least deserve much more from our governing class.
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