Fremont County has defeated its half-percent tax for economic development, unofficial election results say.
The tax is a measure by which taxpayers paid $14.7 million over the past four years into transportation infrastructure and grants for private businesses and other groups.
It was a broad margin, with 9,342 voters (53.7%) opposing the tax and 7,087 (40.74%) voting in favor of it.
The half-percent sales and use tax is split between improving transportation and business. Thirty percent of it goes toward transportation like Riverton’s air service and a local bussing service. The other 70% is allocated for economic development.
That designation has resulted in the local governments giving millions of dollars total in grants to private businesses and groups and some public entities like Central Wyoming College.
Detractors railed against giving people’s tax money to private businesses, calling it “government picking winners and losers.”
Many supporters of the tax countered and pointed to its 30% allocation toward transportation. Some said the air service would need the tax money to survive beyond roughly a year’s time.
In an effort to rescue the tax renewal proposal, a majority of the local governments entered a pact to give more of the economic development money to transportation; and to re-allocate some of it for the county’s ambulance service, which has reported several financial woes of its own.
But a group opposing the tax also galvanized, urging voters to “ax the tax” and calling it a regressive tax, meaning, one that benefits the affluent.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
