Political advertisements are everywhere. They regularly promise to make helpful changes without mentioning that they actually would help only some of us (and sometimes only a few of us). A good example of this is the promise now seen regularly to reduce the “dreaded “car tax.” This refers to the personal property tax on cars, light trucks, motorcycles, and boats. The silence would be complete in any crowd if asked who enjoys paying that tax (or any other tax for that matter.)
But what if you asked that crowd who likes good schools? Who wants effective police and fire protection? Who believes public parks and libraries are good for a community? Our “car taxes” provide funding for these things. Giles County’s budget for 2025-2026 has about 3.2% of its revenue from these taxes, or almost $4.5 million. More urban Montgomery County projects in its 2026 budget almost $22 million from personal property, or about 8% of its total revenue. If these taxes should be eliminated (hurray – lower taxes!) what would happen to our schools? Options would include decreasing the number of teachers – would we be happy with larger class sizes? Outdated technology? Reduced bus service? How about reducing costs in other areas? Reduce the number of police officers? Limiting fire protection? What about charging for using our parks? Closing our libraries? Which, if any, options are worth reducing our taxes? Different people will have different answers, and it makes sense to vote for candidates who support the same tradeoffs that you do. It doesn’t make sense to ignore the tradeoffs.
Of course, some people will want to say we just need to work more efficiently – our local governments should work smarter and harder and continue their work even with less revenue. That’s an easy but false response – it just doesn’t deal with the facts on the ground. Local government workers have tough jobs, generally not well paying, and work hard. Anyone who has experience with our local governments will know this and understand that cutting resources will cut the services that local governments can provide.
So- if you hear that a local candidate wants to cut car taxes, ask what services would be cut. Real choices need to be made – does that candidate value cutting taxes more than giving a pay raise to our police, keeping public libraries open, or providing other public benefits? People should vote for candidates who share their values – and perhaps a majority might agree that public libraries are unimportant. But candidates should identify what they value and what they do not value – just to call for lower taxes while ignoring what services and protections would be cut tells us nothing. Wouldn’t it be great if candidates told us what they really want to do on controversial issues, rather than give us only part of the story. We need to demand more information, and not have our vote based on false or incomplete promises.
