There are those who are willing to benefit by taxes but balk at paying them. Which is understandable, just not admirable. The whole state would benefit if the highways that connect all of us are improved not just piecemeal but as part of a coherent, continuing plan that grows as the state does. Or would that be unspeakably sensible?
Our ordinarily sensible governor, The Hon. Asa Hutchinson, would rather keep fooling with supposedly tax-free proposals rather than swallow hard and have the whole state pay for a highway plan that would benefit the whole state. His stagy strategy is simple enough: Call the tune but never pay the piper.
But there are those in the Ledge like Rep. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana and Fiscal Responsibility, who aren't willing to play these games any more. They dare to call a tax increase a tax increase. The man is a straight talker and the whole state should be listening. Instead of hiding behind consultants who may talk a lot but say little. "We've said you don't need a consultant to go out and know we have a problem with these highways," says Senator Hickey. "That's been hashed out." It's good to hear somebody acknowledge the whole state has a problem and be willing to face up to it.
So what's the problem and what's the answer to it? Listen to a summation of where we are now and what we ought to be doing about it by Senator and sage Hickey along with a number of his fellow legislators. If you have the time and patience to follow the facts and figures he's presented: Now folks pay 211/2 cents a gallon in gas taxes and 221/2 cents a gallon in taxes on their diesel fuel, which together pulled in some $442 million during the fiscal year. The senators would raise the tax on gas to 261/2 cents a gallon and the tax on diesel fuel to 271/2 cents a gallon, which together should bring in about $100 million come fiscal 2018.
Over the next three fiscal years, fuel taxes would go up another three cents, which would mean another $60 million a year for the state's coffers. It would all go on till 2021, when the state would stop and pause and think again--think, not just try to get by with quick fixes that have no point except to avoid calling a tax a tax.
And if this all bores you, that may be the aim of those who would like to have us so mesmerized by the happy illusion of a tax-free state that, like a baby transfixed by the sight and sound of Grandpa's pocket watch as it swings back and forth before easily distracted eyes, they'll forget everything else.
But why should the rest of us? Grownups should do the grownup thing and realize that we're all part of one state indivisible, or at least used to be before the quick fix replaced the long hard slog to reality. These times, like all times, demand thought, not glib substitutes for it.
'Tain't easy, holding out for clear thought instead of convenient shortcuts around our responsibilities. They'll always be there even if we insist on finding ways around them--rather than facing up to them. What is a state, anyway? It's not just a random assortment of taxpayers who'll do anything except pay taxes. Ever since the city-states of ancient times there were unions of civilian-soldiers who responded to the call of duty rather than evade it.
Sorry to break it to you, folks, but we're all in this together and will rise and fall together--whether that community is called Athens or Sparta or Arkansas. As much as glitz and glamour may attract us, and the prospect of a tax-free haven entice us, there's no escaping our responsibilities. We are a community, a commonwealth, like the old commonwealth of Massachusetts or the Old Dominion of Virginia.
Your woes and troubles are our own, brother, and your blessings and benedictions, too. It's the American way, even if not enough Americans know or practice it. We are not just a bunch of soulless individuals lost in a free market that knows no limits. Either of law or custom or religious faith. Our forebears were bound together by a common destiny and fate, and it wasn't just tax evasion.
Taxation without representation may be tyranny, but representation without taxation, privilege without duty, is mere anarchy. Stay strong and of good courage even in the midst of the changing catch phrases and ideologies of the day. They will all pass, We the People--of this state and the United States--will go on. And don't you forget it.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 05/19/2016