Paternalistic politicians—especially paternalistic politicians pushing unevaluated publicly-funded and likely boondoggle projects under the guise of improving the public’s “quality of life”—are exasperating.

And exasperated is exactly how I feel about the current proposed gross receipts tax increase (and the process leading up to this proposal) that the Grant County commissioners have put before voters and are asking them to vote in favor of.

One of the things especially maddening about this tax increase vote is that from its concocted inception it has been hyped by its pushers as a community “quality of life” improver. How the hell is it that a handful of guys sitting in a room by themselves or texting one another decide on which projects would improve the quality of life for county residents?

Other than marking my ballot no on this question, which I most certainly will do, I had no voice, nor am I aware of the community as a whole having any voice, in deciding whether there should be a quality-of-life increase in our gross receipts tax and if so, what should the revenues be spend on.

One thing that every voter should be clear on: despite what the politicians say, we are not voting on a quality of life gross receipts tax increase. Under New Mexico Taxation & Revenue Department rules, our county commissioners could have chosen a true County Quality of Life Gross Receipts Tax option for the community to vote on. Under that option, the County would have been obliged to appoint a "cultural advisory board" from the community to oversee the distribution of any revenue raised under the Quality of Life Gross Receipts Tax.

However, the option our county commissioners chose to put before the voters in the August 19 vote is a County Capital Outlay Gross Receipts Tax. What’s the big deal difference between those two options? Well, under the option chosen by the commissioners, there is no requirement for citizen oversight of public monies spend under the County Capital Outlay Gross Receipts Tax increase.

In other words, the County Quality of Life option mandates the appointment of a broad-spectrum cultural advisory board from the community to oversee the distribution of the Quality of Life Gross Receipts Tax revenue; the County Capital Outlay Option, which is the option we will be voting on, does not require such community oversight.

So as I see it, from the beginning there was no structured, meaningful input solicited from the community. It was literally a handful of guys meeting privately and wheeling and dealing about what projects they thought were good for the community. Couple that with our county commissioners inexplicable decision to not allow the community to vote on a legitimate Quality of Life Gross Receipts Tax, and it leads me to the disappointing conclusion that it was a non-democratic, paternalistic process responsible for putting this unvetted and bogus quality of life tax increase question before the voters. It also makes me wonder whether those responsible for this fiasco have an unhealthy disdain for public oversight--not to mention outright contempt for sound analysis of publicly-funded project proposals before bringing them up for a vote.

Walter “Ski” Szymanski
Silver City