The truth behind the Land Tranfer Tax fiasco

By Chatham Coalition
Posted Friday, February 8, 2008

 E-mail this page    Printer-friendly page

Reading the following is painful to those who tried to stop a referendum train wreck. Perhaps adding insult to injury is the current attempt to lay the blame for the failure of the Land Transfer Tax (LTT) referendum at the feet of the Chatham Coalition. Nothing could be further from the truth. Furthermore those playing the blame game and pinning the LTT defeat on the Chatham Coalition allege that the Coalition did not use its political resources to get the LTT referendum passed.

RALEIGH - The real estate industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last year to oppose a proposed tax on the sale of property, what it called the "home tax." As it turns out, the industry had been saving up money for the expected battle for at least a decade.

"Our organization had the foresight years ago," said Mike Carpenter, executive vice president of the N.C. Home Builders Association. The real estate industry knew, he said, that when the time came to vote on such a tax, "we didn't have the time to raise the money we would have needed." '

Raleigh News & Observer Jan 26, 2008 see: http://www.newsobserver.com/print/saturday/city/state/story/904395.html.

This allegation ignores the fact that the Chatham Coalition was specifically asked not to be visibly involved in this. Initially,Mike Cross thought that he could use county resources to form a County Leadership Committee to serve as a semi-official government referendum political action group (PAC). That, of course, is illegal. Regardless, while Cross included Tommy Emerson and other Bunky Morgan supporters on his proposed committee, he did not invite a single leader of the Chatham Coalition.

Because a number of Chatham Coalition steering committee members and key supporters reside within the town of Pittsboro and its extra territorial jurisdiction or ETJ, many became part of the leadership of Pittsboro Together. It had held an election planning retreat in the spring of 2007 and mapped out its campaign strategy, organizing assignments, and schedule for the critical Pittsboro election months before the LTT referendum was approved by the state legislature.

Committed to this critical municipal election, Pittsboro Together and Coalition members knew if the land transfer tax were put on the November 2007 ballot that Town Board incumbents and their supporters, such as Conservative Voice, would attempt to divert attention from the critical issues facing Pittsboro by injecting the LTT into the race.

At the request of the Pittsboro Together slate and leaders, who had themselves worked hard for the county "integrity ticket" in 2006, the Chatham Coalition agreed to not get involved publicly in the LTT referendum. Another reason -- the Coalition did not want to make the land transfer tax a Pittsboro election issue was because it knew that Pittsboro Together's opponents would use their usual "guilt-by-association" strategy.

Thus, by the time the state passed the land transfer tax, the Coalition's organizing resources were already pledged.

Finally, even if the Coalition leadership had been willing to turn its efforts away from the Pittsboro election and put all its resources into the LTT referendum, it would have been almost impossible to overcome all the obstacles involved in doing so. To have an outside chance against the unlimited campaign treasury and professional campaign messaging resources of the homebuilders and realtors lobby, it would have been impossible to quickly raise the necessary campaign funds for a "tax increase " referendum.

No doubt, had the Coalition actively campaigned for the LTT, it could have only decreased the margin of defeat, while at the same time abandoning its prior campaign commitments to Pittsboro Together, thereby guaranteeing their defeat in that important municipal election.

As it turned out, all of the Coalition's worst fears came true. The LTT was defeated in a landslide. The Pittsboro Town Board incumbents and other opponents in Pittsboro hitched their rides to the anti-LTT express. This provided them with funding and supporters they would not otherwise have had available to undertake an ugly stealth campaign against the Pittsboro Together slate. Anti-LTT voters who normally ignore the town election came out in droves. They accepted the false message that the Pittsboro Together slate was a pro-LTT group, even though none of the Pittsboro Together candidates took a stand for or against the LTT and all of these candidates emphasized that the LTT was not a municipal election issue.

On Election Day, it did not matter how excellent an issue-oriented campaign was run - the Pittsboro Together challengers were run-over by the LTT.

This is a severe setback for much needed cooperation between the town and county on infrastructure efforts and economic development, including downtown revitalization, that are a critical part of the promises and platform of Chatham's new county board majority. Moreover, the public rebuke of the land transfer tax referendum last November precludes any realistic attempt again during in 2008.

Still, despite that defeat, Randy Voller prevailed in his three-person race for Pittsboro mayor, and a citizen election protest gave Michele Berger another election against Hugh Harrington on March 18 for the third slate on the Pittsboro Town Board.

Many in Chatham are aware that the Coalition and most of the progressive people in the northeast part of the county, as well as all the candidates on the Pittsboro Together slate, were active in supporting the election of the current Chatham County Board of Commissioners.

These supporters made a vigorous attempt to persuade the county commissioners that it was a major mistake to put this referendum on an off-year ballot at .4 percent. Against his supporter's advice Commissioner Lucier cast his lot with Commissioners Cross' and Barne's strategy to pass the LTT and put it on the November ballot. Commissioners Vanderbeck and Thompson reluctantly joined out of sense of solidarity with their colleagues in voting to place it on the ballot. In addition to the likely low voter turnout in the northeast and the dramatic downturn in the housing market, the Coalition thinks that the commissioners failed to take the following actions necessary to succeed at the polls:

* Publicly voting to guarantee that all the LTT funds would go to the schools;

* Implementing an extensive county-wide grass roots educational process before putting LTT on the ballot because no taxpayer voluntarily will vote to increase his or her taxes without such education;

* Enlisting of the services of the grass-roots organizations in the county that are experienced in successfully mobilizing progressive voters in local candidate elections and referendums.

It is important to always try to learn something from political failures. This universal and overwhelming election defeat of the land transfer tax across the state demonstrates why consultation with folks who understand grass-roots politics at the local level is critical if local government officials are going to be successful in supporting referendums against well financed special interest lobbies. The failure of the Land Transfer Tax referendum effort was mostly a matter of lack of strategic forethought.

The land transfer tax fiasco will likely be an issue addressed during the spring primaries for two County Commissioner seats, currently held by Patrick Barnes and Mike Cross. It is important that voters know the basic facts behind the LTT referendum debacle before they vote in the May Primary Election.