Undaunted by their failure to jack up car tab fees across King County earlier this year, big government advocates have persuaded Mayor Ed Murray and Seattle officials to place Proposition 1 on the November ballot, to pump more money into a bloated and bureaucratic Metro transit system. Among the findings of a voters guide recently produced by the Washington Policy Center:
- This ballot measure is a vote to pass “regressive taxes [that] increase the city’s financial burden on low-income citizens“.
- The measure would take $45 million more per year from taxpayers – despite the fact that King County Council has already found money to fund Metro after the spring failure of the public vote to raise Metro taxes. “In other words, Seattle officials have placed the tax increases on the ballot as a solution to a problem that may no longer exist“.
- By increasing the annual car fees by 64 percent, Proposition 1 is trying to subsidize Metro with taxes on drivers. The cost of car tabs would increase as the city looks to drivers in order to find money to pay for the wasteful Metro system. If Mayor Ed Murray has his way, car tabs will jump by $60 – with all profits going to King County Metro.
- And it’s not just a tax on drivers, Prop 1 is also set to “increase the sales tax rate by 0.1 percent to 9.6% on retail purchases in the City of Seattle“. By raising the sales tax, the City of Seattle is merely making the cost of living in Seattle higher.
Again?? How many times do we have to vote this down?