PALMER -- On July 1, smokers in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough will pay a dollar more for a pack of cigarettes, with a corresponding jump in the price of cigars, chewing tobacco and other tobacco products.
The Borough Assembly passed a tobacco tax, 4-3, Tuesday. The tax is expected to net an estimated $4.6 million each year, about $4 million from cigarettes and about $570,000 from other tobacco products. It'll take one collection clerk and about $60,000 to collect the tax, according to borough officials.
Before the Assembly passed the measure, they heard from a room full of smokers and smoking-tax advocates. From both sides came personal stories -- about being tobacco dependent, about loved ones who died of smoking-related cancers and how a $10-a-carton tax on cigarettes would affect their lives.
"You're making a smaller branch of society support a larger percent of the burden," said James Allen of Palmer. "Let's all do our part."
Allen was one of several who wanted the Assembly to consider other taxes. A sales tax and a tax on alcohol were the most-often suggested alternatives, among a range of suggestions that included taxes on cell phones, candy bars, hamburgers, condoms and toilet paper. Anything, they asked, but cigarettes.
"There's a lot of people coming to the Valley now," Scott Frank, owner of Mom & Pop Grocery at Four Corners, told the Assembly. "I see them every day, and I think the cigarette tax (in Anchorage) is a part of that. I'll be a tax collector for you, but I'd rather tax everything in my store."
Rachelle Jehlen of Palmer told the Assembly that imposing the tax on tobacco won't deter people from buying cigarettes, but it might lead them to cut out other necessities.
"Like most smokers, I'm in the low and middle income bracket … cigarettes are at the top of my priority list, next to food and shelter. No matter the cost, people are going to continue to smoke. They'll cut essentials," Jehlen said. "As with any addiction, the price of the drug is not a factor when you're dealing with an addict."
Kim Floyd, the Mat-Su Borough School District public information officer, told the Assembly she watched her father, a military veteran and former professor, struggle through the end of his life, battling four types of cancer. Floyd said she was 20 years old when her father died.
"I can personally attest to the fact that there is no redeeming value attributable to smoking," Floyd said. "If it saves one child from having to spend his or her youth watching a parent be ravaged by cancer … then it's worth a million times the revenue it raises."
But the health aspects of smoking weren't being debated, Assemblyman Talis Colberg said.
"I think smoking is a terrible habit … and most of you will die a horrible death. It'll kill most of you who do it. But we're not here tonight because this is a concern of any on the Assembly. This is a revenue issue, entirely," Colberg said.
Colberg, who voted against the tax as proposed, suggested instead a $100-a-pack tax, in the interest of actually deterring smoking. Or dedicate all of the tax revenue, he said, to education programs that would discourage smoking.
He said the borough budget has grown too rapidly, outpacing growth in the community, and the Assembly needs to exercise fiscal discipline instead of enacting a tax that will support frivolous spending.
"No one here promises you if this tax passes, and it probably will, it's going to reduce property tax," Colberg said. "We don't need more revenue here, we need a tax cap, which is on the way, because that is the only way we are going to induce fiscal discipline."
Assembly members Jody Simpson and Lynne Woods joined Colberg in opposing the tax.
Assemblyman Jim Colver said the budget being considered by the Assembly is larger than usual, in part, because it contains capital projects the Assembly has previously cut from borough budgets. Property taxes don't cover the cost of growth, he said, and inflation is making it more difficult to pay the bills.
"Residential growth doesn't pay its own way," Colver said. "With the growth in residential properties, we're growing backward."
Assemblyman Bill Allen said he's no friend of taxes, but until the borough has a broader commercial tax base, the Assembly must look at other ways to fund the services residents require. Allen, along with Colver and Assembly members Mary Kvalheim and Betty Vehrs, voted in favor of the ordinance.
"We can not continue to sustain growth and nail the property owners every time we need money," Allen said. "We've got to work hard to diversify our revenue sources."
Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or 1 (907) 352-6709.
