City's burden has to fall somewhere

ANY time you can get the leaders of Toledo's major arts, cultural, sports, and entertainment institutions in one room at 8 A.M. on a weekday, you know there's got to be an urgent reason.

There was. The leaders assembled last week to express to The Blade's editorial board their united - and vehement - opposition to Mayor Mike Bell's proposal for a new 8 percent tax on the cost of the tickets their institutions sell.

They were all on hand: top executives of the Mud Hens and the Walleye, the Valentine and Stranahan theaters, the art museum and the zoo and Imagination Station, the symphony and the opera, Fifth Third Field and the Lucas County Arena, the SeaGate Convention Centre and Toledo Speedway. Each leader explained, in detail and with passion, how the new tax would harm his or her institution, its educational mission, and its diverse audience.

They argued compellingly that the amount of money the city would collect from the ticket tax - an estimated $1 million this year, within a projected $48 million budget deficit - would be dwarfed by the amount Toledo, and especially downtown, would lose in economic activity.

They rejected the notion that the tax would be easily borne by the latte-and-brie set. They cited research that the tax would fall on five out of every six area families with children. More than a third of the people paying the tax would be unemployed, disabled, retired, or students. That's a quality of life issue, they argued, as much as an economic one.

Some of the leaders said their organizations, to stay competitive, might have to absorb the tax rather than pass it along to their customers, despite a savage recession that has battered their finances. That could affect their ability to provide free and reduced-price admissions, they said.

Joe Napoli, president of the Mud Hens and the Walleye, called the tax "subtraction by addition, in a major way." Robert Bell, president of the Toledo Symphony, noted that the orchestra has cut its musicians' salaries and benefits by 6 to 12 percent to stay solvent.

"If we could raise our ticket prices 8 percent, what do you think we would want to do with that?" he said. He summarized his colleagues' prevailing attitude toward the tax plan: "If you can't support us, don't penalize us."

It was a good show, but we were just the tryout audience. After our meeting, the leaders crossed the street from The Blade building to One Government Center, where they appeared before a tougher critic - the mayor himself.

They couldn't persuade Mayor Bell to drop the tax plan. He said last week he would continue to pursue it, despite a legal opinion from the county prosecutor's office that the city couldn't impose the tax on tickets for events at county-owned venues such as the ballpark and arena.

As I listened at our meeting, I found myself swayed by the groups' arguments. That suggests the problem the mayor confronts, as he has less than three weeks to come up with a plan for erasing the deficit and balancing the budget that the City Council - whose vocabulary appears limited to the word "no" - will accept.

Because if you conclude that the ticket tax would do more harm than good, what do you say to the low-income residents of Toledo - including seniors on fixed incomes - who face the prospect of paying $180 a year for trash pickup as another element of the mayor's budget plan? Isn't that a hardship?

What do you say to the 19,000 or so Toledoans who are lucky enough to have jobs, but since those jobs are in other communities, face the prospect of paying hundreds of dollars more in taxes because of the mayor's proposal to eliminate the reciprocal tax credit? Don't they make a compelling argument that the loss of the credit would offer a big incentive for them to move out of Toledo, if they can?

I share Mayor Bell's belief that the city's unions need to make concessions as part of any budget solution. But I admit that I might find it harder to make that argument if I had to look a police officer or firefighter in the eye while I did it.

Yet what is the alternative? Would we prefer that the mayor lay off public safety employees? Reduce trash collection to every other week? Close city parks and swimming pools? Surrender to control by Columbus?

Is that the kind of city we want? More to the point, what kind of city are we prepared to pay for?

I wonder whether the mayor is having second thoughts about withdrawing his proposal for a temporary increase in the city income tax rate. As tough a sell as that would have been, it still strikes me as a fairer approach than the revenue measures that replaced it.

Maybe council members wouldn't even have agreed to put the tax increase on the ballot, but I would have liked to have seen them forced to cast a recorded public vote on a tough issue. Voters probably would have rejected the city tax proposal, especially after the Toledo Public Schools advanced their own income tax plan, but the community debate would have been worthwhile.

Meanwhile, the mayor can hope that city voters will at least allow him to move money into the general fund from the capital budget. He can hope that union leaders will stop shaking their heads and start talking. He can hope that the council will display some leadership.

And he - and we - can pray a lot.

David Kushma is editor of The Blade.

Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com