Can Only Be Two Taxes to Fund the Arts in Cuyahoga County
The effort to get additional public money to support the arts in Cuyahoga County is a lesson in taking what y'all can get. That'due south been truthful from the get-go, but the current push to extend the cigarette taxation beyond just cigarettes makes the betoken all over over again. Counties seeking authority to tax for a specific purpose have to get permission from the State Legislature. That means working the political system in a country that leans ruby-red and rural. On top of that, revenue enhancement is a territorial business, with competing interests vying for their piece of the pie.
Arts leaders in Cuyahoga County are seeking to bolster public revenue because the stream that voters kickoff approved in 2006 has fallen by about half. The cigarette taxation brought in $22 1000000 when it was new, only simply $12 million concluding year. So while arts activeness in Cuyahoga County has surged in the last fourteen years, and while the the number of organizations seeking back up has grown, the amount of money available has steadily declined.
Considering we have been taxing cigarettes, this is considered successful. People in Cuyahoga Canton are buying fewer cigarettes.
In Nov, Fred Bidwell spoke nearly a strategy to rebuild the revenue stream. Bidwell leads the Arts and Culture Action group, a political action group focused specifically on public funding for the arts in Cuyahoga County. His hope then was that permission for counties to levy a revised tobacco and tobacco products tax could exist part of a "Christmas tree" bus bill before the finish of the yr.
Evidently the Ohio legislature was preoccupied with other things. It didn't get done.
The idea existence proposed is an 8 percent revenue enhancement on all forms of tobacco: not only cigarettes, merely also cigars, piping tobacco, chewing tobacco, snuff, and "vape" products. The tax would be applied as a percent of sales, not a per-unit taxation, which would help to shelter the resulting revenue stream from changes in the market.
Additionally, the new legislation would not only permit Cuyahoga County to ask the voters for such a tax, simply would allow whatsoever Ohio county with a population above 200,000 people to do then. As of 2020, in that location were 14 meeting that criteria. Update: 4 of the 14 counties –Cuyahoga, Lake, Acme, and Lorain–are in Northeast Ohio, which underscores both the concentration of the state's population hither, and also the forcefulness of the region's art sector. Plain about five counties (including Pinnacle and Cuhahoga) are interested in the prospect and would have the infrastructure to pursue it.
Bidwell currently hopes the "permissive legislation" will be part of the standard upkeep nib, which by police force has to be washed past June 30. He hopes that can happen faster, considering that would let more time for a public campaign before a vote in November.
If information technology is not part of the budget nib, at that place are other options: permission for counties to ask voters to corroborate the tax could be introduced as stand-alone legislation, or it could be attached to a different neb.
All the same information technology happens, there'southward plenty of time: The existing cigarette tax does non elapse until 2027.
Further, if the revised tax did become to the voters and fail, the existing taxation would not go away until that sunset engagement.
Bidwell says polling looks skilful: Near voters in Cuyahoga Canton would run into a revised tobacco taxation every bit a renewal, rather than a new revenue enhancement. And last fourth dimension a tax for the arts came up hither, it passed with 75 percent in favor.
The PAC, led by Bidwell, is working with Michael Caputo, a lobbyist with Capitol Partners, on the legislation, with Arts Cleveland and Cuyahoga County Arts and Culture equally function of the brotherhood. Ohio Citizens for the Arts, led past Angela Meleca, is working with regional arts councils to mobilize arts leaders in other parts of the state, who could likewise anteroom their elected officials. Because they are dealing with the Ohio Legislature, winning support in other parts of the state is disquisitional.
Arts leaders from the region will come across virtually with Bidwell and other partners in the brotherhood to hash out moving forward and organizing lobbying efforts.
Tobacco Once again?
During a prior video meeting with regional arts leaders, one participant asked if leaders in the push to heave acquirement for the arts had given whatsoever consideration to a marijuana tax. Bidwell's answer was fairly elementary: Ohio has not nevertheless legalized recreational use of marijuana: simply medical employ. And medical products can't exist taxed.
He added that when marijuana does become legal for recreational use, multiple sectors–from health to tourism, from parks to the arts–volition want a slice of information technology.
That points to some other question, though: Why tobacco, over again?
There are 2 problems with taxing tobacco: first, it is a regressive revenue enhancement, which – when it "works," causes revenue to decline. That is what led to the demand to revise the tax.
More than consequentially, though, a tax on tobacco more significantly impacts poor people and people of color, because statistically those people are more than likely to smoke and use tobacco products.
On the bright side, that very disparity—that poor people and People of Color are more likely to use tobacco—was a potent statement (as if whatever should exist necessary) to drive greater equity in the assistants of public funding for the arts in Cuyahoga County, especially the acquirement allocated to individual artists.
Withal, it puts the burden of supporting the arts substantially on people who can least afford information technology.
"It is certainly true that cigarette consumption skews toward people of color," Bidwell said. "By expanding to other forms of tobacco, it takes a step toward making it less regressive. A broader swath of guild uses tobacco in forms other than cigarettes."
So in that sense, the revised tax will be an improvement.
The Arts and Culture Action committee did consider other prospective taxes and in 2022 did some polling to meet what might work.
What about beer and wine, for example? The association between art receptions and vino might brand this an obvious connectedness. Equally Bidwell notes, there is a "sin tax" that supports repair and renovation on the stadiums, which are likely to seek renewal or expansion soon. "That is a existent political lightening rod that nosotros actually have been counseled strongly to avert," he said.
Additionally, the lobby has begun to piece of work with independent music venues, and of form their business depends on alcohol sales.
Bidwell says the idea of a dine-in meal tax is one of the possibilities considered. "Call up of information technology: you go out to a show and have a overnice dinner. Dining out and cultural activities are very symbiotic. And that is very progressive. If you become to the Marble Room, if yous can afford to go there, you are going to pay more. That is really good to me. Merely in the current surroundings that would exist the definition of a stupid idea, because the dine in industry is really on the ropes."
He continued: "In an ideal world you'd say a real estate tax is the manner to become, because you go to where the upper-case letter is. Y'all become people with the almost upper-case letter paying the well-nigh tax. Only politically, the voters gave us a resounding 'NO' when nosotros polled them on this. It was the least popular arroyo. … What I believe is most off-white would not get us through an election. To some extent yous take to go with the tax you lot can get."
Source: http://canjournal.org/2021/01/support-for-the-arts-the-tax-you-can-get/
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