Republican women host speaker defining proposed buyer's excise tax

Oct. 3, 2005

Sequim, WA - Republican Women of Clallam County (RWCC) met September 27 to discuss the local buyers excise tax(BET). Guest speaker was Steve Marble.

Marble is past president of the Sequim Association of Realtors, serves on many committees at the state and local level, and is a property rights advocate. He received his degree in marine biology, and serves as elected supervisor of the Clallam Conservation District.

Marble described the tax measure and was also available for questions from the group. Following are some of his comments:

What is Proposition 1? Who knows?

The resolution passed by the Commissioners says, "Shall the Board of County Commissioners levy for ten years a buyer’s excise tax on each sale of real property in the County at a rate of .5% of the selling price, proceeds to be used for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining agricultural conservation areas?"That’s it. If it passes the Commissioners get to write the plan and procedures. They have a blank check. In short, we are buying a pig in a poke. The tax can be passed and the rules changed after it is adopted. As this proposition moves to election, there is nothing that restricts purchase & maintenance of "conservation areas" –they can be anything. They can decide to buy development rights on large or small pieces of land. Without a defined plan, expect special interests be creative on diverting funds to their pet project.

This issue is not new. In 1995 the County attempted to pass a measure that would have floated government bonds to buy farm development rights. 80% of the voters rejected this idea.

In 1998 the county established a transfer of development rights program. This included critical areas and open space to make it more palatable to Port Angeles and the West End.

In 2001, the commissioners took $250K from capital funds and with a small amount of private funds and matching federal money, spent over half a million dollars to purchase, in 2004, development rights on 44 acres of farmland. In 2005, this same farm went out of business, hardly a successful pilot project.

In 2001 we also had the "pretend farms" program proposed. This proposal had anyone with five acres of land who signed a statement saying they would not develop their being granted a 60% reduction in their property tax. The county assessor squelched this idea by pointing to state law requiring actual prove of farming to qualify for this tax exemption.

Who has been behind all these efforts? Pretty much the same people: Commissioner Tharinger, Nash Huber, and Bob Caldwell are names we see repeatedly. The concerned organization was Friends of the Field. Now they have reconstituted themselves as Clallam Citizens for Food Security with a web page at "Ya gotta eat.com"

Reasons for opposing this proposal:

Even though taxpayer dollars will be used to buy development rights from farmers, the land will still not become public property and taxpayers will not be able to have access to the open space their tax dollars were used to preserve.This new tax will cost the average home buyer in Clallam County an additional $1000 that has to be paid for at the time of purchase and probably cannot be financed into the loan.

Because of high housing costs, Washington’s home ownership rate is already the 43^rd worst in the nation; this tax will significantly increase the down payment required and only make a home less affordable for the first time buyers, young people and seniors who are already struggling to buy a home.

This tax will increase the cost of housing for seniors wanting to downsize to smaller homes by taxing the equity on their existing home and taxing them again when they purchase a new home.

This new tax will increase taxes in Clallam County by more than $27 million over the next ten years.This new tax is a 100% increase over the existing local real estate excise tax.

This new tax is double taxation on property owners who pay property taxes each year and then most pay part of their equity when selling their home.By restricting growth, the cost of buying a new home in Clallam County will skyrocket-just like Seattle, Bellevue and Snohomish County.

Passing this measure will cost all aspects of the home building industry hundreds of jobs; an industry that is one of the pillars of our local economy and one of the largest employers.

Passing this measure will raise the cost of real estate in Clallam County compared to neighboring Counties, causing businesses and jobs to move elsewhere.

This new tax will make buying a home in Clallam County even less affordable for our children and grandchildren, and force them to move further away to other counties that don’t have this tax.The lack of affordable houses is already a problem; passing this measure will make it even more difficult for first time home buyers to buy a home in Clallam County.

While all the Clallam County home buyers would pay this tax, most of the money would probably be spent on conservation easements in the Sequim Dungeness Valley. This tax is unfair- it is new buyers who have to pay outrageous prices for houses, while it is existing homeowners who vote laws and policies that drive up housing costs by obstructing the building of new homes. The heaviest burden falls on lower income folks.

All the lofty talk about "open space" or "saving the farmland" is used to disguise the plain fact that those who already have theirs want to keep other people out, especially other people not as upscale as themselves.

Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize anyone’s business. Regardless, a multitude of programs, laws and incentives already exist to facilitate land preservation including zoning, critical area ordinances, endangered species act, open space tax reductions, conservation reserve programs, to name a few.

How much is enough? How much land do we need to preserve?

In the best case scenario, the $27 million Prop. 1 would tax from the citizens of Clallam County could purchase development rights for no more than 1500 acres of farmland, most of which is in the Sequim/Dungeness Valley. Nash Huber’s farm alone is 400 acres which represents almost 1/3 of the potentially protected land. Whose interest are we really protecting?