More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Local Option Sales Tax

Dade Commission Ties Up Loose Ends For SPLOST Question on May BallotBy Robin Ford Wallace

The Dade County Commission at its regular March 6 meeting finalized formalities to make renewal of its longstanding special purpose local option sales tax (SPLOST) a referendum item in the May primary elections. 

A lot rides on the referendum results:  The county depends on funds generated by this 1-cent to a dollar tax on purchases to buy everything from road equipment to fire trucks.

Dade has in fact already borrowed, through a 2013 bond issue shared with the independent Dade Industrial Authority Development Authority (IDA), against anticipated SPLOST collections to pay for emergency road repairs necessitated by last year’s heavy rains. 

But Dade voters have historically returned a consistent yes to the SPLOST, which must be reapproved very five years.  “I know I’ve got records going back to 1998,” said Townsend.

This year’s SPLOST project list is largely a continuation of the one adopted in 2009, which in turn had carryovers from the 2004 list.  “Everything, pretty much, on this one was on the other one,” said County Clerk Don Townsend.  “They run out and we just continually renew it.”

An exception is the new county courts facility, which is now a fait accompli and thus off the to-do lineup, he added.

But many other projects are ongoing, such as roads, which require constant upgrades and maintenance, and capital safety investment such as equipment and vehicles for the county’s 911 Emergency Center and volunteer fire departments, which must also be updated, repaired or replaced periodically.

The SPLOST language also gives Dade permission to spend for relocation of county offices in case of a “major disruption,” such as a tornado or flood, said Townsend, but he added that at present no county employee was in need of any such relocation as far as he knew.

Dade commissioners, like other county leaders statewide, tout local option tax as a “fair tax” paid by citizens as well as by travelers passing through and buying gasoline or other incidental purchases.

In Dade, sales tax is 7 cents on the dollar.  In addition to the 4-cent state sales tax imposed by Georgia and the 1-cent SPLOST, buyers pay another penny for LOST, or regular local option sales tax, and one more for ESPLOST, an educational special purpose local option sales tax that goes directly to the county school system.

ESPLOST is imposed and renewed separately every five years, in Dade’s case, most recently in 2012 – after it was allowed to elapse for three months because of the school system’s failure to get it on the ballot in time.

But LOST needs renewal only every 10 years.

SPLOST funds by Georgia law must be used for capital expenditures as opposed to general operating costs.  LOST money, by contrast, explained Townsend, is used in Dade entirely to offset real estate tax collection.

The county LOST portion, that is – “I’m not sure what the city does with theirs,” he added.

He elucidated that in Dade County, LOST funds are shared between Dade and the Trenton city government in a simple, population-determined 80/20 split.  In larger counties that contain more than one town, added Townsend, that sharing between county and municipality can get more complicated.

Georgia adopted the LOST initiative for counties in 1978 and SPLOST in 1985.

Other concerned parties to Dade’s SPLOST referendum, the Dade Water and Sewer Authority and IDA, had already signed off on this year’s version. 

And the Trenton City of Commission held a special called meeting, also on March 6, to approve an intergovernmental agreement with the county required for the SPLOST question. 

robinfordwallace@tvn.net