Funny how nobody ever told Wyoming homeowners how to “replace” the additional dollars they were paying in property taxes since about 2019.
Nobody called and said, “Hey, Mr. Homeowner, we know your property taxes went up along with your assessed valuation this year. To replace that money, how about no charge for your license plates this year?”
And yet, we're told that the relatively small amount of money counties lose from Prop 1 must be made up somewhere else. It must be REPLACED, because we all know that every dollar government gets is crucial and spent with laser-like precision.
And any dollar less will starve little children, burn down our homes for lack of fire protection, probably give us all ugly toenail fungus, and condemn Wyoming to hopelessness and abject despair.
Forever.
You want that, Buster?
So, they say, don't even think about voting for Prop 1.
Somehow, they never worried about replacing those additional dollars we were sending them in property taxes every year. And I don't know where all those new dollars went, except here in Laramie County we apparently now own a nine-story, mostly-empty office building in downtown Cheyenne. (Let's hope they don't fill it with government employees.)
Impressive people – governors, librarians, firefighters, teachers, assessors, people who like little children - have been warning us for weeks now that a cut to a small portion (8% to 14%) of total revenues going to counties will do terrible damage to our state.
Little did we know how precarious our state's financial condition had become. We're even told we'll need a state income tax if people like us pay less in property taxes on their primary residences, not counting the land.
Most galling is the out-of-state funding the opposition has received to fight Prop 1. While we were told before the August primary that the Freedom Caucus was getting funding and orders from evil forces outside Wyoming (like steadfast Trump supporter Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio), it turned out that the Freedom Caucus haters had a well-funded campaign of their own to “Break the Freedom Caucus Majority,” complete with a 20-page, full-color brochure on how to do it, and lots of money, including a $1.1 million donation from the Tides Foundation, which is bankrolled by George Soros.
(Soros doesn't live in Wyoming. Even Jackson.)
Sounds kind of out-of-state-ish, if you ask me.
And now we find out that the effort to kill Prop 1 received $1.83 million from the National Education Association, based in Washington, D.C. (The Wyoming Education Association chipped in another $50,000.) But that outside money, like the outside money that threw out the most conservative Republicans in the Wyoming House in August, is apparently just fine with our Democrat and Near-Beer Republican friends.
One of those conservative Republicans who was defeated in the August primary is Rep. Ann Lucas of Cheyenne, whose successful opponent was reportedly encouraged to challenge Lucas by none other than our governor.
Despite her loss in the primary, Lucas remains un-cowed. Here's what she said about the effort to now scuttle Prop 1:
“The Vote No on Prop 1 PAC has reportedly raised $2.3 million, with 79 percent coming from a single source: a national teachers' union based in Washington, D.C.,” Lucas posted last week. “By comparison, just eight individual Wyoming people contributed a combined $2,236.”
That, too, sounds kind of out-of-state-ish, if you ask me.
“Wyoming has a constitutional obligation to provide and adequately fund public education,” Lucas wrote. “That obligation does not simply disappear because voters change the property tax system.
“So why is a national teachers union spending such an extraordinary amount of money to influence the outcome of a Wyoming ballot initiative?”
Good question.
It will all be over but the shouting, this very week.
Over the years, I've witnessed some pretty hysterical reactions to tax-cutting efforts in other states. But what I've seen in Wyoming in recent weeks - canceling that Halloween candy give-away in Laramie County was the most obvious overreaction - takes the proverbial cake.
So, beam me up, Scotty.
Pretty sure I've seen it all now.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
