By Matt Fredmonsky
Record-Courier staff writer
Could a beer tax solve Kent's budget crisis?
The city of Kent is planning to ask Ohio legislators to give municipalities the authority to impose individual sin taxes. Current Ohio law allows only counties to enact such a tax. City Manager Dave Ruller, at the informal request of Kent City Council members, asked Law Director Jim Silver to discuss the possibility with state representatives.
Councilman John Kuhar discussed the idea of a tax on individual beer sales in October. Since the issue arose, Ruller has posted a blog on his Web site, Kent360, and has been discussing the idea with a Columbus lobbying firm.
Kuhar said he proposed a tax of 4 cents on beer only.
"I think it would help the money crunch in the city and help pay for the problems alcohol creates," he said.
Kuhar said neighborhood issues this fall involving loud parties and the high cost of police overtime for the unofficial Halloween celebration downtown strain safety forces. The beer tax could be spent on cleaning up after the celebration and to support the city's safety departments, he said.
"Maybe if we could reduce that overtime pay there would be stable money in the budget," Kuhar said.
About 72 percent of the city's expenses are employee-related with safety forces comprising 49 percent of the city's total work force.
Ohio does have a slight sales tax on beer of $0.0014 per ounce on servings less than 12 ounces, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation. And for servings more than 12 ounces but less than 128, the state tax is $0.0084 for every six ounces -- certainly nothing felt deeply by the average Saturday night bar customer's pocket.
In his blog posting, Ruller pointed to construction of Jacobs Field through a sin tax in Cuyahoga County as a positive result. The county has a history of funding arts and entertainment through taxes on cigarettes and voters there approved Issue 18 this month to increase a cigarette tax to fund arts programming. The tax added 30 cents to each cigarette pack and is estimated to raise about $20 million annually.
"Sin taxes raise revenue by imposing excise taxes on liquor and tobacco," Ruller wrote, "which happen to be a couple of the most popular commodities in our college town and also contribute to a lot of our city service calls (such as) police and fire... it's a value-laden tax that says if you consume this product you should pay more because it has some consequences that are viewed as bad."
Silver said he plans to begin contacting state legislators this week.
"The holidays are not a prime time to get much from our legislators," Silver said. "I imagine we won't see anything until the first of the year."
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