Against the tax increase

LITTLE ROCK — WE LIKE a lot of things about the wish list now being set before the voters of Little Rock. Why, it’s a whole feast of civic projects, capital improvements, expanded facilities, promises of better services, and so lavishly on. Early voting on the sales tax increase to pay for it all begins Tuesday.

Some parts of this alluring package come complete with a deal-closer: a sunset clause that would end all the capital spending after 10 years. Indeed, we might be endorsing that one part of the proposal today if all that spending had been compressed into halfthat time-maybe five years-so city hall would have to establish some clearer priorities for spending our money.

But in general, what’s not to like? Well, we like pancakes and waffles and French toast and country fries and huevos rancheros and coffee and orange juice and cereal and corned beef hash and dim sum and coffee, tea and milk, too. Not to mention chateaubriand with spinach and asparagus and a good shiraz to wash it all down, and a bulging dessert table to choose from before the after-dinner liqueurs. But not all in one serving followed by an equally indigestible bill.

Which is what this two-part, 200-percent raise in the city sales tax would amount to. It would increase the total take from sales taxes collected in Little Rock, not counting various add-ons, from 7 1/2 to 8 1/2 cents on the dollar. The very thought is enough to give us indigestion.

Whoever drew up this proposition scattered around proposals for both basic services (like public safety) and capital spending (like a bigger port and industrial park) like so much bait. The result: If a Little Rock voter just wants better police and fire protection and law enforcement in general, he’s got to swallow this wh-o-o-o-le thing.

It’s as if city hall had understood that a simple, limited straightforward tax increase that concentrated on publicsafety would be easy to pass, and so decided to piggyback all its other needs and wants on top of it. Until less than half the revenue from this whopper of a tax increase-40 percent or so-would be used for public safety. All the rest of this half-billion-dollar tax increase over 10 years would go for other purposes,however worthy or not.

All this taxing and spending would come at a time when the economy still hasn’t fully recovered from the Great Recession and hovers on the edge of a double-dip downturn-or something even worse. And never saythings can’t get any worse; they can, and have gotten worse from time to time.

Let’s hope the economy gets better, but hope is a poor substitute for planning. Do we really want to soak up another 1 percent of the city’s sales tax base, leaving even less of people’s resources for other divisions of government to tap for their needs when the time comes? (The state, for example, or the Central Arkansas library system, or some other level of government that really needs the money. Like education.) What kind of responsible stewardship is that?

The timing of this considerable tax hike-and “considerable” is an understatement-isn’t just wrong, it shows how removed city government is from the people. We had an election in 2010 that amounted to a nationwide rejection of still more taxing-and-spending, but Little Rock’s movers-and-shakers don’t seem to have noticed. That’s how out-of-touch the promoters of this tax increase are.

What’s more, this is an increase in the most regressive of taxes-the kind that hits those least able to pay the hardest.

Maybe if Little Rock’s voters-and hard-presssed taxpayers-would vote unequivocally against this doublebarreled hit, city hall might finally get the word. It needs to. Direct from the people. The message: Come back later. If and when the economy improves. With something more reasonable.