Mayor Gordon floats the idea of a temporary sales tax

So reports the Republic. The mayor calls it a “emergency economic surcharge.”

The city is facing another huge budget gap—approaching $100 million, after the council already cut more than $250 million this year.

A good part of the story is given over to Republican officials nattering on against the idea of raising taxes.

No one says the what to me is the most salient aspect of the plan—that sales taxes are the most regressive type of levy, one that places a disproportionate burden on the poor and working class.

The coverage was similarly incomplete when the governor proposed her sales-tax plan during the state’s budget crisis this summer.

This is why sales taxes are unfair:

The poor and working class spend most of their income each year. Rent comes first, of course, and then after that, by definition, the vast majority of their money is spent on necessities—food, clothes for the kids, etc.

I say “by definition” because if you’re not spending what money you have on necessities, then you have discretionary income. Which means you’re probably middle class. Even if you exempt some necessities, the fact remains that poorer people spend all their money each year.

Every percentage increase in the sales tax creates a corresponding percentage decrease in the living standards of a poor or working-class family.

A one-percent tax on food is one percent less food for your family. And with an 8 percent sales tax already in effect in Phoenix, that’s a huge piece of a working family’s income.

Again, by definition, your higher-income families spend money on a lot of other things, things you wouldn’t call necessities. They save and invest relatively large percentages as well.

And let’s remember that the state’s fat cats have been doing swell the last few years, surfing a wave of real estate money and parading around in their tubby SUVs. (They also got an enormous slate of tax cuts from the Bush administration earlier this decade, a gift that keeps on giving, year after year*.)

Now, you don’t have to agree with this contention, though it is based on facts, is a widely accepted analysis of taxation, and contains a strong moral component.

But shouldn’t it be part of the debate? Couldn’t the Republic at least have mentioned it?

---

• From the NYT:

Those cuts will have saved individuals, and cost the government, $2.34 trillion, according to calculations the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research institute, made for The New York Times. The Bush and Obama administrations have called the center’s past calculations reliable. Interest on the money borrowed to finance those tax cuts equals a month worth of income taxes paid to the government by individuals.

Emphasis added. In other words, almost a tenth of the money you pay the U.S. government each year goes to pay off merely the interest of the Bush tax cuts to rich folks.

Mayor Phil and his GF get into trouble

Turns out Mayor Phil Gordon has been dating one of his political consultants. The trouble comes because he’s been paying her for political work and has in the past nominated her to city boards.

Sarah Fenske in New Times has an in-depth story here.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon hasn’t needed to raise money since he waltzed to reelection in the fall of 2007, leaving a war chest stocked with $370,000.

Yet in the last two years, Gordon has paid his chief fundraiser big bucks all the same. Records show that Gordon paid fundraiser Elissa Mullany and her business partner, Cate Wunder, a total of $39,000 since January 2008. That’s a period in which the campaign hasn’t shown a dime of revenue.

Gordon says he’s been daing Mullany since his breakup with his wife; their divorce is not yet final. (Mullany’s married but separated too, Fenske says.)

It looks like the mayor had to put out a press release about the relationship after Fenske started nosing around. Here’s how the Arizona Republic plays it:

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon on Tuesday asked the city attorney and a former Arizona Supreme Court chief justice to review his political ties to consultant Elissa Mullany, the woman he is now dating.

The request came after The Arizona Republic and another media outlet inquired about the relationship and whether Mullany was benefitting from any taxpayer dollars.

Note the lack of grace with which the Republic acknowledges its competition. My issue with this isn’t so much not naming the New Times as with the clumsiness. Good journalism should handle various issues consistently, and it shouldn’t leave obvious questions in readers’ minds.

A lot of stories are pursued by different news outlets at the same time. It’s appropriate to say, in those cases, “The mayor released the information after news organizations started querying the office about it.” But if they are going to note that one other outlet in paticular is doing the asking, the paper should name it.

Why did it not name New Times? Maybe it’s because Fenske had a lot more information.

The Republic trumpets its “review” of the matter … and shares it with readers in three paragraphs.

Fenske’s piece is 1500 words long, and more than forty paragraphs. And it has a lot of evidence of the positively continental attitudes of some of the major players in the story:

Mullany, who was then known as Elissa Peters, was divorced from her first husband, Aldon Terpstra, in December 1998. She married James Mullany five years later, in October 2003. She has two young sons.

A former City Council staffer, James Mullany now works for former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson at his development company, Old World Communities/ Berkana Townhomes. Thanks to an appointment from Gordon, he’s also on the city’s Deferred Compensation Board.