PALMER -- Matanuska-Susitna Borough voters may not, after all, get a chance to limit the amount of all tax-derived revenue the borough can collect each year.
Borough Deputy Mayor Jim Colver on Tuesday proposed his own cap, one that mirrors the initiative slated to appear on the borough's October election ballot.
Tax-cap sponsors Penny Nixon and Dennis Oakland told the Assembly they believed Colver's move reached the supreme height of irony.
"I take no joy in noting the fetid stench of hypocrisy," Nixon told the Assembly. "We have here the delicious irony of the introduction of this ordinance 41/2 years after the introducer got into office.
"Further, he publicly advocated against it and tried to block a public vote," Nixon said.
Colver, presiding over the Assembly in Mayor Tim Anderson's absence, asked Nixon to temper his remarks and not single out Assembly members for personal attacks.
After the meeting, Nixon said he had no quarrel with Colver. He was frustrated that Colver's apparent support of the ordinance was more than 14 months late in coming, and after tax-cap sponsors had battled the borough in court to place the measure on the ballot.
The group successfully gathered 4,400 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. Mat-Su Borough clerks verified only the required number, 1,788.
"For him to turn around and suddenly introduce it now is using the issue for political gain," Nixon said.
Colver said his proposal is not a political move. He added that, although he has asked many questions about the tax-cap initiative, he hasn't opposed it. He said he asked the Assembly to impose a tax cap rather than putting it before the voters because the ballot initiative could leave local road and fire service areas in a bind.
Both tax-cap proposals in Mat-Su mirror one passed in Anchorage in 1984.
After the Anchorage cap passed, O'Malley and Hillside community councils voiced concern that mill rates in road-service areas, which pay for road projects and maintenance, were lumped into all municipal revenue and limited by the tax cap.
Mill rates in Anchorage road-service areas were cut when the demand for other city services rose. After a flurry of attorneys' opinions, Anchorage lawmakers determined that if voters in a service area voted for a cap on service-area taxes, its mill rates would fall outside the municipal tax cap. If the service area didn't cap its mill levy, its revenue remained lumped in with all municipal revenue.
Colver said his version of a tax-cap specifically exempts service-area revenue. If voters pass it without that provision, he said, state law prohibits any amendments for two years.
"All borough revenues would be in one big pot. If a service area in Butte or Palmer needed to raise its rate half a mill, there would have to be an offset somewhere in that year's budget," Colver said. "What I thought that would really do is weaken the service areas."
Nixon said tax cap sponsors believe service areas are already exempted from the tax cap. Oakland told Assembly members the matter could be resolved simply by adding definitions to the code.
"It is the Mat-Su Borough code and not our initiative that needs repair," Oakland said.
A public hearing on Colver's proposed tax cap is scheduled for the Aug. 2 Assembly meeting. If the measure passes at that meeting, it would go into effect immediately and the ballot initiative would be moot.
Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or 1-907-352-6709.
