Amendment 7: The Tax That Keeps On Taxing
According to current projections, the proposed Missouri Amendment 7, or 0.75-cent transportation sales tax, would raise $5.4 billion for roads, bridges, and other projects over the next 10 years. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) has been active in promoting a list of those projects, showing how it would spend the largess. But what is less publicized is that many projects on that list receive the sales tax funds contingent on local governments also bringing money to the table. In many cases, projects approved for state sales tax money require local governments, and their taxpayers, to provide tens or even hundreds of millions of additional dollars.
Take the example of the Saint Louis area. The City of Saint Louis is set to get $25 million for a streetcar that goes from downtown to the Central West End. That might not be such a bad deal, if it were not contingent on Saint Louis coming up with an additional $271.5 million to complete the plan. The sales tax will also provide $40 million to the city for bus rapid transit, but only if Metro can come up with an additional $40 million. In return for $20 million for an I-64/22nd St. Parkway interchange (mostly to the benefit of the Northside Redevelopment Project), the city and developers have to provide an additional $8.9 million. All told, in return for $270 million in state sales tax money, the City of Saint Louis has to find an additional $323 million from other funding sources. That’s $1,016 for every man, woman, and child living in the city.
The story is similar in Kansas City. The city will get $144 million for the streetcar, contingent on it finding the rest of the half billion needed to make the project happen. While Kansas Citians have long been aware of, and been familiar with plans to fund, the streetcar, this is not so for other projects. Kansas City will receive $24 million for a bike path from Pleasant Hill to Kansas City, if it can find $48 million locally. For those counting, that’s a $72 million bike path. Altogether, projects that the sales tax would fund require $459 million in additional funding from the Kansas City area.
The result of these policies is that after taxes have gone up statewide, purportedly to save our “crumbling” highways, local governments may have to increase taxes even further to secure funding for projects on MoDOT’s list. Amendment 7 is the tax that keeps on taxing.
