UPDATED: Tucson Voters Overwhelmingly Say Nay to Tucson’s Prop 414

UPDATED 5/11 at 9:30pm: Tucson voters appear to have roundly rejected Prop 414 by a roughly 70/30 ratio. This is a stinging rebuke of the city council and Mayor’s approach to backfilling likely cuts in state shared revenues resulting from tax cuts by the GOP caucus in the legislature. Either voters don’t want more taxes, or they were dissatisfied by the way the new tax revenue was proposed to be spent. Either way, voters have turned the Mayor and council back to the drawing board for another try later this year, perhaps.

I moderated a panel discussion re Tucson’s Prop 414 for TheDGT.org featuring Mayor Romero and Vice Mayor Santa Cruz in support of the Prop and April Putnam of the No on 414 in opposition to the Prop. We had a good, in-depth discussion of the pros and cons of the Prop, the reasons voters are being asked to increase the city sales tax by 1/2 a percent, and what exactly the money will be spent on over the decade over which the Prop authorizes the increased tax.

It’s well worth a watch to make up your own mind on how to vote on that ballot you likely just got.

Good luck with the decision. I can’t say for sure which way I will vote, and I certainly don’t think I have any compelling reason to recommend a vote to you either way. It all depends on your spending priorities and tolerance for increased sales tax rates.

Certainly, the overwhelming consensus of the Democrats seems to be to support the increase in order to offset the lost shared revenues resulting from Ducey’s flat income tax scheme and thereby avoid any diminution in city services that would likely result.

Voting NO would result in either a significant long-term loss of revenue for the city of Tucson, or – more likely – force the City Council back to the drawing board to craft a tax and spending proposal that is more attractive to voters for ratification later this year, or next (there are three opportunities per year for city ballot questions).