The Kitsap County commissioners will have to raise our taxes soon, but fortunately this increase is really small.
Besides which, they realistically have no choice.
Rather than an unfunded mandate, the Legislature this year imposed what might be called a funded mandate to upgrade the 911 emergency communication system.
But it’s funded only if the county commissioners raise the relevant tax on telephone service. Otherwise, they have to take revenue from some other program to pay for the upgrade.
The statute requires the county to provide funding for the enhanced 911 system that is equal to the amount that could be collected in the county at the higher tax rate.
Both state and local excise taxes on telephone services will go up. The state tax will be 25 cents per line per month rather than the old 20 cents. The county tax will be 70 cents rather than 50 cents.
And for the first time, people using “voice-over Internet protocol” (VOIP) telephone services will be paying the tax.
Those are pretty small tax increases when considering what each of us pay, but they provide substantially more revenue to the state and county.
The system that would be constructed with the new revenue would be a “next generation” digital communication system to take the place of the old 911 systems that have been around for years.
The state’s revenue from this tax is used in part to assist rural counties where the local tax revenue is insufficient to fund the needed system upgrades.
Since our economy is in the doldrums, even this small tax increase had some opposition in the Legislature.
Sen. Derek Kilmer and Rep. Jan Angel opposed it. Our other legislators either voted for it or were excused from the vote.
It will be interesting to see whether the county commissioners receive any criticism for raising the tax to the new maximum rate.
We tend to think the commissioners actually have a choice when they raise any tax in good times or bad.
In this situation they have a choice, but spending more (as required by state law) on the 911 system without raising the tax needed to provide the funding would make no sense at all.
This will be the first increase on the older “land line” telephones since 1992, so at least for that service it seems overdue when technology is changing and equipment becomes outdated.
Requiring users of “VOIP” telephone service to pay the same tax as everyone else seems only fair, even if for them it is a tax increase during a bad economy.
Cell phone users last saw an increase in 2002, when their rate was raised to the same 50 cents per month as was being paid by land line users.
The idea in the law passed this year is to have everyone who can access the 911 system pay the same tax to support the system.
The goal is to put in place the digital technology needed to provide access to all, including people with disabilities who have found that text messages work well for them but cannot be handled by the 911 system.
If things go as planned, the new system will be able to handle whatever can be sent by telephone in an effort to call for help.
It seems like a worthwhile thing to do. Telecommunication technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades, but 911 systems haven’t kept up.
One could wish for a better economy when any tax increase is imposed, even when it will cost most people only a quarter more each month.
But the legislature decided not to wait for a better economy before upgrading a system that we all hope will work for us when we need it.
As things now stand, the upgrade will take a few years to complete, but cannot get past the initial stages without this extra funding.
It’s obviously a core function of government to provide emergency communication systems like the one that handles our 911 calls, and there seems to be no way other than a tax increase to bring it up to date.
Bob Meadows is a Port Orchard resident.
