The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Our cities are struggling to pay the bills, sales tax isn’t cutting it for paying for city services anymore, with more and more services coming from local funds instead of federal funds and with more and more sales being done tax free over the internet, cities have degenerated into being whores for any developer that would build a new big-box store in their confines. Tulsa, and other cities, are struggling to keep enough police on the streets, to keep the grass mowed and street lights lit. Crime is way too high.

But what do we do? First, a new twist on an old idea. Income taxes for cities. We need to help cities with their funding woes by getting them off being purely funded by sales taxes. I propose that the state lower income taxes, and then offset that lowering rate by instituting a local income tax at the same rate on everyone in the state. If you live in a city, then the city gets that tax, if you live in a rural area served by the county, the county would get the tax. The state would continue to collect the taxes as today, no new forms, but a percentage of the taxes would then be given to local governments.

Cities would have more money for cops, and for all the other things that cities should do, and would be less at the mercy of developers. Cities would then be more encouraged to annex people and provide them services. Cities largely freed from being slaves to sales tax could again more easily dictate what the city needs from development instead of developers running the show and suing to not even have sidewalks in urban areas.

But we need to be sure that a large part of the new money is directed at public safety. How about direct payments to cities for public safety? Have the state give every city and county a rebate, of say, $5,000, for every sworn officer they employ, Tulsa for instance would get something in the range of 3,500,000 for 700 sworn officers (if that is how many we have now). The city could hire another 50 just on the money from the state, and the cities would get more rebates for the new cops too. Cities would be encouraged financially to have more cops, more cops equals less crime.

I have read that Oklahoma will have another surplus this year, maybe as much as another $400 million dollars. How about we take $200 million of that money and put it back into our cities, combine that with the new spending we have done lately on roads, on schools and on economic development and we really would be getting somewhere.

We could have better maintained cities with better services, lower crime and improved new development, with no increase in taxes.