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Prop 1 challenged

To the Journal Editor:

In Sunday’s edition of The Mining Journal, AARP Michigan executive Tom Kimble’s op-ed on Michigan’s Proposal 1 paints an attractive picture of this complex ballot issue.

He notes that the Personal Property Tax will free up business interests to add 15,000 new jobs and create $450 million in business investment.

He further suggests the revenue holes that repeal of the PPT will create in Michigan’s local community’s budgets will be replaced so everyone wins and there will be no tax increase!

What Mr. Kimble left unsaid is how the state will replace these local revenues; the PPT provides $500 million in revenue to the State. The plan is to use a portion of the 6 percent Michigan Use Tax to hopefully continue the lost revenue stream to local communities.

This plan suggests that the 6 percent Use Tax is experiencing some sort of revenue surplus, news to most Michigan citizens.

Careful consideration of this proposal is recommended. The only real financial benefits on the table appear to fall to those business interests currently being taxed.

The rest of the benefits appear to be downstream expectations that these business interests will perform as the supporters suggest and that the state will, indeed, reprogram 6 percent Use Tax to local communities.

I wonder how much of the state’s share of the Detroit grand bargain came from tax dollars promised earlier to projects, programs, and plans similar to Proposal 1.

William J. Hart, Jr.

Curtis

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