‘Supermajority’ tax votes gain interest

Columns

October 6, 2012

‘Supermajority’ tax votes gain interest

By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Sat Oct 06, 2012, 08:00 AM CDT

STARKVILLE, Miss. — One product of the protracted economic downturn nationally has been an explosion of anti-tax legislation in state government. The purpose of the legislation is simply to make it structurally harder to raise taxes and to build those tax hike roadblocks into either state law or to the state constitution.

Michigan is one of the latest states to see such a battle play out.

In the Mississippi Legislature since 1970, lawmakers have to earn a three-fifths “supermajority” vote to pass a bill that raises revenue or enacts taxation. It’s a requirement of the Mississippi Constitution.

The adoption of general obligation bonds like those used for school construction and the like require 60 percent “supermajority” votes under Mississippi law as well. And the notion of “supermajority” votes likewise factor into the process of gubernatorial veto override votes.

Mississippi’s governor can veto legislation if he can garner enough support in the Legislature to stave off a three-fifths majority vote. But that power is tempered by judicial oversight. The landmark state Supreme Court ruling on gubernatorial vetoes in Mississippi came in 1989 when the court ruled that while the governor is authorized to veto “parts of an appropriation bill,” the veto must be related to items of “distinct appropriations.”

In the ruling, the court said the governor could not veto unwanted legislation on appropriation bills — saying in effect that the Legislature has the constitutional authority to place conditions on appropriations.

There are 16 other states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin — that have at least some applicable “supermajority” requirement for raising taxes.

Arizona, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, South Dakota and Washington all have two-thirds majority requirements. Delaware, Florida (at least for corporate income tax increases), Kentucky and Oregon require the same three-fifths “supermajority” as does Mississippi.

Michigan’s current “supermajority” requirement only applies to state property taxes, but voters there are about to decide Proposition 5, which would require a two-thirds “supermajority” to raise income, corporate, or other taxes.

In Michigan, opponents of the “supermajority” legislation say it will guarantee political gridlock, stymie economic development and hamstring government from raising necessary revenue. Proponents say the laws would make it harder for lawmakers to raise taxes and make the Michigan tax system more predictable.

In Mississippi, existing “supermajority” constitutional requirements have indeed made raising taxes at the state level more difficult and likewise have made the state’s tax system more predictable. But those rules have likewise not been an impediment to major economic development projects like Nissan and Toyota.

One interesting development in Michigan is that the “supermajority” legislation has made strange political bedfellows of business groups and labor unions.

The unintended consequence of “supermajority” tax laws is that they in truth empower minority coalitions who have learned to use the laws to play not to win, but to block. The result is that often the will of the majority of voters gets thwarted.

(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)

Text Only

Columns

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Columns Headlines

Columns

Search Results

‘Supermajority’ tax votes gain interest

Site Map

Contact Us