A False Choice: Gambling or Taxes
An op ed piece in the Concord Monitor suggest that if you don’t support gambling them you must want more taxes.
Soon the Legislature and the residents of New Hampshire will be faced with a choice: cut existing programs in health and human services, the environment, mental health, corrections, safety, education and on and on, or look for new revenue. The only choices are increasing property taxes, instituting an income tax or sales tax or introducing expanded gambling at those facilities where gambling already exists and maybe consider other possible locations.
My property tax this year will represent approximately 30 percent of my total income. I cannot afford to continue to live in the state without relief, and I am not alone.
Those who oppose gambling revenue must be in favor of increasing property taxes and/or instituting an income or sales tax. “None of the above” is not a choice.
I’m not buying this argument at all. The Democrats increased spending by almost 18% in their last budget. Let’s start cutting with all of that and then move on to cut more waste out of our state government. I don’t believe for a second that the choice is between gambling and higher taxes. That is a false choice and a blatant attempt by the representative to leverage the state’s current financial situation for his own agenda.
Whether or not New Hampshire has gambling should be considered as a separate issue to the the budget problems. I have no problems with slots going into the race tracks or whatever but please don’t try to push it as some miracle solution for the state’s problems. The government of New Hampshire – led by John Lynch and his Democrats – vastly over-spent and now must cut the spending to live within its means.
Representative Well please stop trying to present us with false choices.
Related posts:
- Tax Revolt in New Hampshire? Taxes Going Up or Down?
- Budget Cuts, Gambling and Gas Tax Increases in New Hampshire?
- Slots and Expanded Gambling for Rockingham Park?
- Governor John Lynch Backs Higher Tolls…and Taxes…and Fees…
- Candy Tax in New Hampshire?
The debate over whether to allow predatory gambling into New Hampshire is not about the thousands of lives it would ruin, it is entirely about the notion that there will be enough magic gambling money to balance the state budget and reduce property taxes. But the $250 million plus revenue estimate cited by Rep. Wells would not come from magic sources, it would be taken from money that residents now spend at existing local businesses and for food for their families, heating oil, and retirement savings.
And the $250 million number is more than triple what the state would actually get when Massachusetts legalizes bigger, flashier casinos on our southern border, as it will promptly do if New Hampshire moves first.
Rep. Wells’ more alluring claim is that gambling taxes will be large enough to reduce property taxes by one-third. The total New Hampshire property tax burden for 2008 was just under $2.9 billion. If all the $250 million in overstated gambling tax revenue were sent to towns and cities (and none to balance the state budget), and towns and cities used all those funds dollar for dollar to reduce property taxes, property taxes would decline by less than ten percent, not by one-third.
Unfortunately, even a promise of a ten percent property tax reduction is unsupported by very recent New Hampshire history. Of the $400 million in increased state education aid given to cities and towns after 1999, almost none remains in property taxpayers pockets. An analysis by the Committee for Sensible School Funding found that, for the 2003-04 tax year, only 4 cents of each new dollar of education aid was used for property tax relief, 96 cents went for increased municipal, county, and school spending.
Casino gambling advocates single attractive proposition always seems to involve wildly exaggerated promises of free money. The legislature would be wise to learn from the toxic mortgage collapse, ignore the siren song, and use information from sources other than gambling advocates.