Even the heartless IRS wouldn’t try to pull something this repugnant.
A frustrated local business owner sent me this copy of his annual Fullerton tax renewal in which a $25.00 tax payment was accompanied with a $20.00 “processing charge.”
You read that right. It’s an 80% surcharge for the city’s Herculean effort to cash your check and rubber stamp you as paid.
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How much extra, if anything, did the city pay for processing? Was this one of the consequences of outsourcing? (And was the charge due to something about this particular customer, such as his being late? I’m not saying it was; I’m just asking.)
contemporary American Industry.
I think that Travis is implying that this doesn’t involve industry at all, but that this is the City is acting improperly by imposing a processing fee for this service — as one way of its making up for the departure of the water tax.
My only surprise is that Travis is surprised (or at least implying so). As I said a month ago, in this post — http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2012/03/water-rates-a-thirst-for-revenue-and-what-goes-down-the-drain/ — of course they’re going to do whatever they think that they have to do to make up for the lost revenue. If they have to hire 100 more cops just to enforce traffic laws to the letter in order to accrue enough fines to cover the budget, they will.
Travis and Sebourn and Tony argue that there’s an alternative — just cut down on “Total Compensation.” But while a lot of people are sold on the bungling of the Kelly Thomas affair and on the water rates as well, far fewer are convinced that this ideological — I won’t say “boneheaded,” but I feel safe saying “ideological” — crusade makes sense. (I suspect that that’s why it’s not as well emphasized in voter materials on the recall.)
No one has answered directly my question about whether a Whitaker-Sebourn-Kiger majority would seek a Fullerton bankruptcy as a way of eliminating the city’s prospective pension burden. (Travis, any comment for the record?) So, yes, lacking revenue or a willingness to slash costs in what may be an irresponsible fashion, the city — as predicted — is going to do what it thinks it has to do to keep the lights on. No surprise there.
(By the way: cutting top-level employees will not, of itself, keep the lights on. We’d be looking at a purge. And then, god help Fullerton, maybe outsourcing.)
The fee is just another little cheapjack swindle. The cost is virtually nonexistent. And they’ve been doing it for years.
Try to stay on topic. And avoid all the long-winded self righteousness.
A swindle is something illegal. Is this illegal? More and more, as cities (not just Fullerton) need to cover their budgets, that will be the key question.
But hey, since you’re here, what do you think that Fullerton voters should think about the possibility of a municipal bankruptcy under a Whitaker-Sebourn-Kiger regime? (I’ll start abbreviating that as “WhiSK.)
Is that, in effect if not explicitly, on the ballot in June? Don’t you think that voters should know?
You must know, Tony, that in politics the “topic” is never necessarily what one decrees it to be. You’ve demonstrated that well yourself.
Yes it is illegal. Governments in California can’t charge more than they cost.
You could look it up.
What can they include in the cost? Portion of salary? Portion of capital costs?
You can be the one to look it up. Let me know the citation when you find it — if you find it.
You really ought to answer that municipal bankruptcy question.