About Special Taxing Districts (STDs)
A Special Taxing District, like a rose by any other name, would have as many thorns.
By their very nature, STDs have less oversight than their gov't-run peers, which oft leads to rampant growth and higher rates of taxation.
Although the Recreation Governance Study Committee (RGSC) was tasked with studying a variety of options, they quickly settled on an STD. Yet, no Rec Districts exist in VT.
When queried, RGSC members were unfamiliar with the STD critiques that a Google search yields: John Oliver video, Goldwater Institute report, or Imperfect Union textbook. (See below)
Nor did RGSC contact any of the 13 Vermont Villages that share Rec Depts w/ their Towns, for example, to determine if that option would work here, before making their decision.
RGSC volunteers lent their time and energy in good faith. However, it appears the end was in sight, way before their deliberations began. (See Fait Accompli pages, 1 - 3.)
By their very nature, STDs have less oversight than their gov't-run peers, which oft leads to rampant growth and higher rates of taxation.
Although the Recreation Governance Study Committee (RGSC) was tasked with studying a variety of options, they quickly settled on an STD. Yet, no Rec Districts exist in VT.
When queried, RGSC members were unfamiliar with the STD critiques that a Google search yields: John Oliver video, Goldwater Institute report, or Imperfect Union textbook. (See below)
Nor did RGSC contact any of the 13 Vermont Villages that share Rec Depts w/ their Towns, for example, to determine if that option would work here, before making their decision.
RGSC volunteers lent their time and energy in good faith. However, it appears the end was in sight, way before their deliberations began. (See Fait Accompli pages, 1 - 3.)
From across the Political Spectrum: "STDs are bad for taxpayers"
John OliverAttention: off-color language
Yes, this is comedy, but it's also tragedy:
• 40,000 U.S. STDs (non-school districts) • $100 Billion in annual spending • Such "ghost governments" can be created out of thin air, but dissolving them is next to impossible. |
Goldwater Institute
The entire 2014 "Out of Sight" article
from which the excerpt above was taken:
"Just as each individual fisherman has an incentive to over-exploit the shared resources of the sea because he receives all the benefits of the increased catch but suffers only a small fraction of the adverse consequences... each [STD] has an incentive to overexploit the shared tax base to provide benefits to its special-interest constituency." (p. 2)
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Imperfect Union
"Parents care more about school spending... and bookworms care more about libraries, and nature lovers care more about parks, and so on.
"Rather than engaging with each other in the push-and-pull pluralism that characterizes a general-purpose gov't, ... [an STD] encourages each group to focus its attention, and concentrate its influence, on its own narrow policy domain. "Because the benefits of [an STD]'s spending accrue disproportionately to a particular group but the costs of taxation are spread over all groups, a problem arises that is analytically similar to the overfishing problem seen in environmental economics." (p.2) 
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