Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.
The Regional Transportation Commission will try Thursday to overcome a central argument of opponents to the RTC's proposed $2.7 billion transportation tax initiative.
The ballot proposal, Question 10, has received support from business, government and nonprofit groups. A community coalition said last year that the region's transit and road system was close to breakdown and needed an infusion of funding.
But the coalition, dubbed "RTC-3" in bureaucratic shorthand, never approved the agency-backed funding formula on the ballot this fall. Instead of about $1 billion in new gasoline taxes, the formula on the ballot would get most of its money from sales taxes -- about $2 billion total.
"The 'more taxes' people claim their so-called Fair Share Funding Program was recommended by a citizen committee," opponents argue on the sample ballot. "It was not. That committee recommended only half the $2 billion sales tax increase you are now asked to approved."
RTC General Manager Jacob Snow acknowledges that the community coalition never formally endorsed the revised funding package. Snow believes the group, meeting for the first time since early this year, will sign off on the plan Thursday.
"The RTC-3 developed the original project and funding recommendations that became Question 10, but they never got back together and officially endorsed the program," he said.
The ballot question will not change regardless of any action by the community coalition, Snow said.
"I don't think it's necessary to reconvene the RTC-3, but it would be prudent to do so," Snow said. "This will be an opportunity and receive an endorsement from the RTC-3 ... We met with members of the financial working group, but we never went back to the RTC-3 for collective endorsement."
The funding package the community coalition proposed included $1 billion from an eighth-of-a-cent increase in Clark County's sales tax. The RTC took most of the group's recommendations, but in June upped the sales tax increase to a quarter-cent.
About 50 people from local business and industry, nonprofit groups and government agencies were members of the community coalition.
Irene Porter, executive director of the politically potent Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, noted that the construction industry will feel a greater bite because of the change in the formula.
"Despite that, we do support it," said Porter, also a community coalition member. "Transportation is just such a critical part of our community.
"The general public is incredibly opposed to the gas tax," she said.
Snow said the lack of an endorsement was because the group would have had difficulty meeting during the summer months, when the funding formula was revised.
Opponents, however, criticized the RTC for changing the community coalition's original funding scheme.
"It was arrogant of those who changed the whole tax scheme to do so after they had received the report from RTC-3," said Kenneth Williams, a retired attorney and one of three people who wrote arguments against Question 10 for the sample ballot. "They are now attempting to go back under these circumstances and get a 'ratification' of their major change."
Williams said the increased reliance on a sales tax to fund the transportation work was "regressive" since it shifts too much of the burden to less-affluent individuals and families.
"It hits everyone, even the lowest-income taxpayer."
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