In the process I discovered

the techniques that can help create the impression of a tax inequity.

Basically, there are only two.

(1) Suppose you have a city

like PTC which happens to have a tax digest of 39 percent of the county's

but a population which is 35 percent of the county's. By claiming that

all county services are distributed in proportion to population, not to

tax digest, you can claim an inequity equal to 4 percent (39 minus 35)

of the whole county budget. To disguise what you're doing, you wade through

numerous items one by one without announcing your approach (making an

occasional concession).

(2) With respect to any service

which the county provides but which the city supplements, you claim that

since the city provides a service with the same name, its residents "obviously"

get nothing out of the service provided by the county: clear examples

are items like roads, library, recreation, planning, and law enforcement.

Thus you plug in a value of zero for that county service for city residents.

That's essentially how the

tax inequity figures, as presented by Mayor Lenox, were developed.

That approach is basically

wrong, and it finds no support in Georgia law. The county has nearly tons

of documents to prove that former County Finance Director Emory McHugh

patiently considered these issues item by item and showed Mayor Lenox

how there was no tax inequity. The county commissioners were made aware

of all this.

It is totally unfair to paint

the county commissioners as indifferent to Fayette County citizens who

live in the cities, or as favoring residents of the unincorporated area.

After all, of the five commissioners, three do live in cities.

The world can be divided into

two classes of people. There are those who are frustratingly patient and

who dig into all the esoteric accounting stuff involved in coming to a

proper, scientific conclusion. Those who do will find the mayor's conclusion

in error. Pure and simple. Very few people can afford to do that, and

there's no shame in not doing it so long as you don't hop blindly onto

his tax inequity bandwagon.

I have no idea who the "distinguished

outside third party consultant" is. I don't know what makes him so

distinguished. Now that the secrets of finding tax inequities have been

revealed to you, you yourself may want to go into other counties, where

you'll be received as a distinguished outside third party consultant,

and earn yourself a good fee at their citizens' expense, dredging up alleged

tax inequities.

Meanwhile, somebody ought to

tell our elected officials, here, to be a bit more circumspect about the

use of outside consultants and experts. Former County Finance Director

Emory McHugh is more of an expert on this tax inequity issue than anybody

from the outside, and there is nothing that can demoralize a good public

servant more than this stubborn willingness some people have to always

believe the guy from out of town.

If enough citizens show an

interest, I'll be glad to arrange to provide a two-hour lecture in some

public place somewhere showing why PTC citizens are not the victims of

tax inequity in relation to Fayette County. I'll do it free. I do have

a suit and a briefcase, but remember, I'm not from out of town.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County

[email protected]