The details of the making are usually messy but the underlying principle, awarding public money to private interests meeting public goals, is one enshrined in the traditions of our country, and has largely worked well.
Time will tell if this one does.
Dan Walters: Car dealer subsidies dangerous
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, March 19, 2007
Mike Daugherty is an auto dealer who peddles Chevrolets and Hummers from a sprawling complex on Sacramento's Fulton Avenue.
Actually, Daugherty's dealerships on Fulton Avenue are a mile or so east of the Sacramento city limits in unincorporated Sacramento County -- an area called Arden Arcade, whose civic leaders are pushing incorporation as a new city.
Therein lies a tale of politics and money that should be disturbing no matter where you live, all rooted in the antiquated practice of giving the local share of sales taxes to the jurisdiction in which the sale occurred.
"Situs," as it's known, was fine when communities were separated and people shopped where they lived. But in 21st-century highly urbanized California, where cities abut one another and commercial strips abound in unincorporated, county-administered areas, it's a poisonous anomaly.
Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax limit law, made local governments very dependent on sales taxes, and they began doing elaborate deals, often misusing redevelopment funds, to subsidize auto malls, big box retailers and other sales tax generators, and sometimes raiding them from nearby communities.
