Report: Tax caps hurt in long run
September 30, 2009 by Staff Reporter
Filed under News & Politics
Despite the conclusions of the newly released report, “Are Local Government Tax and Expenditure Limits a Race to the Bottom?” Franklin Mayor Ken Merrifield said residents in his community, which was the basis of the report, are quite happy with the city’s 20-year-old spending cap.
That conclusion, however, flies in the face of the report prepared by economist Brian Gottlob, which was the subject of a teleconference Tuesday afternoon with media and leaders of Keep Manchester Moving, the group that commissioned the report and that is challenging the legality of the tax cap in the Queen City. Earlier this year, the Merrimack Superior Court ruled that a similar proposed spending cap in Concord was illegal.
Mr Gottlob:
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for publishing referenced Tax Cap study report, you tout to be objective, while paid for by anti-tax cap supporters.
You state (on page 1) that “…only one city, Franklin, has a long enough history with an expenditure limitation to adequately assess the full range of impacts.”
You are quoted in The Hippo “that Nashua has a cap for only 5 years, and data for only 3.” On this false premise, you compared Manchester with Franklin, not Nashua
What your report completely ignores is that Nashua successfully voted a Tax/Spending Cap in 1993 (4 years after Franklin) and has operated with that cap successfully for nearly 16 years.
Surely you cannot claim that our $150 million High School project is anti-education? Surely you cannot claim our $37.6 million inverstment in the Broad Street Parkway is damaging to our infrastructure and growth? Surely you know, or should have known had your study been objective, that the Tax/Spending Cap has been in effect as local charter law in Nashua for nearly 16 years?
Of course, you cannot possibly include Nashua data for that would invalidate your entire report and its deceptive and misleading conclusions.
You are an example of what gives “bought and paid for” studies a bad name. How could you possibly claim any integrity, any validity, any honesty by totally ignoring the most appropriate comparison of Nashua with Manchester, the two largest cities in NH.
I challenge you to debate me in public…but surely I expect you to decline for you could not withstand the disclosure for having published a fraudulent report.
Fred Teeboom
Alderman-at-Large
Nashua
Author and Lead petitioner, Nashua Spending Cap, 1992-1993.
I understand the importance of brevity in headlines, but could you at least note that this report is the product of exactly the people that wand tax caps abolished in the header??
For example:
Group Opposed to Tax Caps Produces Report Supporting Their Claims
See? No spin, no bias, no sins of omission (something, say, the NYT is big on) and at least accurately reflects the story. Your headline makes it sound like it’s a statement of fact, when it most certainly is, at best, the opinion of one particular group.