The fate of Lowndes County’s 2-percent restaurant sales tax hangs in the balance after a conference committee failed to agree Sunday evening on whether the new legislation should extend to all businesses that sell prepared meals, as was requested by both the City of Columbus and Lowndes County.
House members, led by Jeff Smith (R-Columbus), are insisting on including a provision the tax would only be collected from patrons at businesses where annual prepared food and beverage revenue is at least $325,000. Senate members, led by Chuck Younger (R-Columbus), are insisting on removing the floor because that is what the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors and Columbus City Council unanimously resolved. The $325,000 is part of the current law.
“It’s dead,” Rep. Gary Chism (R-Columbus) said of the restaurant tax bill this morning. “Chuck Younger and the Senate side wouldn’t accept the changes we made to put the ($325,000) floor back in and we’re not going to take it out on our side.”
Younger, however, disagrees.
“It’s not dead. It’s up to the House,” Younger said. “The ball is in their court now. More accurately, it’s in Jeff Smith’s and Gary’s hands.”
The bill would have extended the county’s 2-percent restaurant sales tax four more years. The tax is otherwise set to expire June 30.
Both the House and Senate bills went to a conference committee, made up of three members of both the House and Senate. Chism, Smith and Manly Barton (R-Moss Point) represent the House while Younger, Gary Jackson (R-French Camp) and Walter Michel (R-Ridgeland) serve from the Senate.
The dispute over the threshold threatens to kill the tax, which generates $2 million in revenue used to fund almost all of Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau’s tourism efforts, as well as a portion of the Golden Triangle Development LINK’s. If the tax is renewed, it also will fund improvements at Propst Park and funding for the Terry Brown Amphitheater project and funds for four city festivals.
Jeff Smith takes to Facebook
Jeff Smith didn’t return a call for comments this morning, but in a Facebook post, he laid the fate of the tax squarely at the feet of the Senate for not agreeing to the $325,000 floor.
“(sic) Anyone in the Columbus Lowndes County area, might suggest to the Mississippi Senate, to withdraw their stance on the 2-percent restaurant tax, and not remove the $325,000.00 threshold included in the legislation since its inception of 1986,” Smith wrote. “I do not believe the majority of the Board of Supervisors wants to raise taxes on many of the ‘eateries’ in the city and county. The City of Columbus has relented and asked to pass the legislation with the threshold. Otherwise, without a threshold of $325,000.00 to protect most eating places in the County, the legislation will die, and a good program (CVB) and other organizations will lose their main source of funding.”
David Armstrong, chief operations officer for the city, said both he and Mayor Robert Smith texted Younger on Sunday to ask that he agree to the addition of the $325,000 threshold.
“The reason we took out the $325,000 in our resolution was to match what the county had in theirs,” Armstrong said. “We absolutely do not want this bill to die, so we asked Chuck to support the version of the bill the House sent to the Senate.”
Harry Sanders, president of the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors said he had been contacted to agree to the change as well.
“Nancy Carpenter (CVB Director) called me and asked me to call Chuck to tell him to accept the floor,” Sanders said. “I told her, I’m just one member of the board of five. I cannot speak for the board until they have authorized me to do so. I think it should be the same thing for David Armstrong and the mayor. They don’t have the authority to do that, either, in my opinion.”
Younger said he was determined to abide by the wishes of the council and aldermen as stated in their joint resolution. In that resolution, both parties asked that the threshold be removed.
“That’s what the city and county had in their resolution and I’m not changing it,” Younger said. “Jeff’s going to smear me and say that I’m raising taxes. But it’s not fair for one restaurant to (collect) the tax while another doesn’t. I’m doing what the people sent me to do here and that’s to follow their wishes.”
Not a tax on restaurants
Removal of the threshold would have generated an additional $60,000 in annual revenue based on Fiscal Year 2017 collections.
“We were told that removing the threshold would be considered a new tax and the Legislature wouldn’t support it,” Carpenter said. “While I understand their point of view to a point, I don’t see it that way. We’re not taxing the restaurants. We’re asking them to collect the tax. That’s the difference.”
Carpenter said she would agree to the $325,000 threshold if that’s what is needed to guarantee the survival of the bill.
“We would like to have had the threshold removed, but at this point, I’d be thrilled just to have it passed,” she said. “As badly as we need that $60,000, for the benefit of Lowndes County and all the tax does for our community, it’s better to move ahead with what we have rather than squabble over that.”
Sanders, meanwhile, said he believes Jeff Smith is using his position to disregard the will of the people.
“Jeff has been lobbying and lobbying Chuck to get the Senate to change its mind,” Sanders said. “But why shouldn’t the House and Jeff Smith change their mind? Jeff is down there, all-powerful, saying ‘I don’t like this, so to hell with what the people have to say. Well, both the city and the county agreed that removing the floor was the fair and equitable thing to do. Jeff doesn’t care about that. He’s going to jeopardize $2 million in revenue just to get his way. What is wrong with him?”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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