A Tulsa City Council discussion on Thursday about the city’s reliance on sales tax revenue turned to criticism of an education proposal by University of Oklahoma President David Boren that would raise sales taxes statewide by 1 percent.
“Just because something is a major, pressing need doesn’t mean that we come up with ridiculous, half-cocked solutions to solve problems because our state legislators are too inept to solve it themselves,” Councilor Blake Ewing said as a final statement in the meeting. “We are adjourned.”
His comments came during a meeting of a Ewing-led task force, which focused Thursday on a discussion about other sources of revenue available to the city to fund needs that have been refined during the Vision renewal process.
“Frankly, President Boren’s proposal scares me,” Ewing said. “I think it is just bad policy that hamstrings Oklahoma’s cities and will continue to cause us to have the same kind of typical political conversations in our city halls across the state right now.”
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Boren recently unveiled a proposal for a statewide vote on a 1 percent increase in the state sales tax to fund K-12, Career Tech and higher education, largely to pay for higher teacher salaries.
“I understand that education is important, but I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing to say that because education is so important, any solution is a good solution,” Ewing said.
Tulsa’s expiring 0.6 percent Vision 2025 sales tax has been the target of many needs in the city, including economic development, public safety and Arkansas River infrastructure.
Ewing said Boren’s proposal and support of raising the statewide sales tax would put Tulsa into the upper echelon of municipal sales tax rates in the nation — a position that some say would make Tulsa much less competitive in economic development efforts.
“I think it was done this way out of desperation, not out of concern for overall impact on the state,” Ewing said. “Polls were done statewide, and the rural parts of the state prefer sales tax hikes to property tax hikes for obvious reasons. It’s all political, and it all stems from a lack of prioritization of education by state lawmakers.”
The discussion about broader taxes was a learning effort from councilors who wanted to know more about taxes like property tax that the city could possibly leverage to pay for things like more police officers.
