April 3, 2009

First of all, I would like to apologize to Jeff Golden for some catty comments I made in a rebuttal I submitted to the Tidings last week about the meals tax. I don’t know how many people read it, but twice I insinuated that Jeff wasn’t a hard worker, which is not true. I overreacted to his statements referring to “cranky restaurant owners” and demonizing Realtors, and I went over the line. I actually thought about calling the Tidings to take out the offending statements but in a lapse of judgment failed to do so. Sorry again, Jeff.

Last Saturday I espied Jeff Golden's commentary in the Tidings about revisiting the meals tax, and I was shocked by ... no, never mind, I wasn't shocked. Jeff admitted in the commentary that he was married to Mayor Cathy Golden at the time, so nothing in his commentary was any different than the same old arguments people have used for the last 16 years. His statement that the people fighting the tax back in 1993 were "cranky restaurant owners" and "Realtors" pissed me off, and it's the reason I sent this rebuttal to the Tidings.

Where he dug up the "Realtors" to blame is beyond me. I talked about it the other day with City Councilor Russ Silbiger, who in 1993 was a restaurant owner and one of the more vociferous opponents to the meals tax, and he couldn't understand how Golden could include Realtors as being overly aggressive about fighting the tax. In fact, as someone who was intimately involved in the opposition to that tax in 1993, I don't remember Realtors getting involved at all. I think Jeff was just looking for some convenient boogiemen to blame, forgetting that almost 50% of the people in town voted against the tax.

Anyway, here's what I wrote. I expect to hear from people who don't agree with me, which is cool. I can understand where they're coming from, because getting tourists from California to help pay our bills is an attractive proposition. I've always been a proponent of a statewide sales tax because tourists would pay their fair share (after all, when we visit California and Washington, we pay a sales tax in their state).

The problem is, when ONE locale in a non-sales tax state institutes a sales tax, it puts them at a competitive disadvantage because people in the surrounding locale will not come to that area as often as they did. IT IS A PROVEN FACT and it is harmful to the economy of Ashland.

Curtis Hayden