Commissioners discuss citizens’ tax concerns
October 16, 2009
Valencia County Commission generally agreed Wednesday night that the county commission will move forward with an election on a permanent tax that doesn’t limit its uses only to an expansion of the Valencia County Detention Center.
Some of the citizens involved in gathering the signatures that compelled an election on the correctional facility gross receipts tax have said they can’t vote in favor of the tax because it doesn’t limit its uses to an expansion and doesn’t have an expiration date. They argue that when the commission approved the tax in July, the commissioners had the option of tailoring its uses and giving it a sunset date.
“I would also be heartily in favor of getting the tax passed if there’s a sunset date in it. Just as the last one has a sunset clause, this one should have a sunset clause in it,” said Bob Gosticha, a Meadow Lake resident who gathered signatures. “It should also define exactly how it is to be spent.”
Gosticha said the tax could be used to pay someone to cut the detention center’s lawn or give a detention center employee a raise under the broad uses approved by the commission.
In July, commissioners generally understood the tax could include an expiration date, like the original correctional facility tax passed 10 years ago, which expires December 31. The commissioners intentionally excluded a sunset from the new tax.
Rael and county attorney David Pato disagree that the uses could have been tailored.
Rael said the uses are prescribed in state law and the commission had no choice but to approve the full range of uses. He pointed out that state law provides a list of uses that the commission merely cut and pasted into its ordinance.
“Our hands are tied in terms of the specifics because it’s statutorily mandated by Santa Fe,” Rael said.
Citizens argue the opposite, that the law is flexible in allowing the commission the opportunity to limit the uses. The law, Gosticha said, uses the term “or” instead of “and” when it lists the uses, providing flexibility.
The applicable state law reads:
Any ordinance imposing a county correctional facility gross receipts tax pursuant to this section shall dedicate the revenue from the county correctional facility gross receipts tax for the purpose of operating, maintaining, constructing, purchasing, furnishing, equipping, rehabilitating, expanding or improving a judicial-correctional or a county correctional facility or the grounds of a judicial-correctional or county correctional facility, including acquiring and improving parking lots, landscaping or any combination of the foregoing; for the purpose of transporting or extraditing prisoners; or to payment of principal and interest on revenue bonds or refunding bonds issued pursuant to the provisions of the County Correctional Facility Gross Receipts Tax Act.
Rael said the tax is necessary because of the expansion, and that’s the intent of the tax. He said without the tax, money will have to be found elsewhere to fund an expansion.
“We have to house our prisoners,” Rael said. “There’s nothing we can do about it — absolutely non-discretionary. But we don’t have to blade your roads. We don’t have to have community centers.”
He said the county should be able to provide all of that, but with a dwindling budget, it can’t.
He also said the county could be ordered by a court to provide a better living situation for overcrowded male prisoners and for female prisoners living in a section of the detention center referred to as “the dungeon,” which is in need of an upgrade.
In response to an inquiry from Commissioner Georgia Otero-Kirkham, Pato said it might be possible to amend the correction facility tax ordinance passed in July to add a sunset clause.
“We would have to follow the same process that was utilized to adopt the original ordinance,” he said, which would take weeks. The election must be completed by November 27.
Otero-Kirkham noted that the ordinance can be repealed at any point after it’s been approved by the public, so even without a sunset, a majority of commissioners can essentially sunset it by repealing it.
If the public defeats the tax, the tax can’t be brought up by the commission for action again for a full year.
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