Cuyahoga County Council should drop the idea of hiking the county sales tax to pay for repairs at Progressive Field and Rocket Arena without asking voters first.
The proposal under discussion would raise the county’s 8% sales-tax rate by 0.15 percentage points. That would be a tax increase imposed by elected officials alone, and the case against it starts there: taxpayers should get a direct vote before their bills go up.
The county has already gone down this road before. In 2007, two of the three former Cuyahoga County commissioners approved a 0.25% sales tax to fund the Med Mart, and voters were never asked.
Three years ago, County Council extended that quarter-percent sales tax for another 40 years, again without putting it before the public. Those decisions were mistakes then, and repeating the pattern now would only deepen the problem.
Cuyahoga County already shares Ohio’s highest combined state and local sales-tax rate at 8%, tied with Franklin County. If County Council added another 0.15%, the county would move to the top spot outright. On a taxable $100 purchase, the current rate produces an $8 tax bill; under an 8.15% rate, that same purchase would cost $8.15 in tax.
There are better ways to do this. One option is to raise admissions taxes in a way that applies only to the two Gateway venues, rather than spreading the cost across all county shoppers. That approach would target the people using Progressive Field and Rocket Arena instead of loading another burden onto everyone else.
The need for repairs is not in dispute. The stadium and arena “sin tax” money already collected from Cuyahoga County smokers and tipplers has not been enough to cover the maintenance and repairs needed at Progressive Field, home of the Guardians, and Rocket Arena, home of the Cavs.
State leaders have not shown much appetite for helping. Republican lawmakers in the Ohio General Assembly, after pushing to help the Browns move to Brook Park, have shown little interest in assisting Cuyahoga County with the Guardians’ and Cavs’ downtown venues.
Gov. Mike DeWine has floated one possible fix: doubling the state tax on sports betting to help pay for Gateway repairs. But the legislature has shown little interest in that idea, with the sports betting industry apparently doing what it does best.
Another route would be for Cleveland City Council to increase the city’s admissions tax, but only for Progressive Field and Rocket Arena. Ohio law allows cities and villages to impose admissions taxes, and the state does not cap the rate.
Cleveland already uses a tiered structure. A May Cleveland City Council release said, “Cleveland first enacted an admissions tax in the 1970s at 6%, later increasing it to 8% in 1995 to help finance construction of the city-owned Browns stadium.
In 2012, the city revised the structure so venues under 150 people were exempt and those with capacities between 150 and 750 paid a reduced 4% rate.”
That structure shows the city has the authority to set different admissions-tax rates based on venue size. A higher tax aimed at Gateway would make the people attending those events help pay for the buildings they use, instead of shifting the cost to county taxpayers through another sales-tax increase.
Cuyahoga County Council should shelve the sales-tax maneuver and stop trying to solve a public funding problem by sidestepping the public.
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