600 million hidden reasons to support the Sales Tax hike

The plan supported by our Sheriff Si Leis to raise the Sales Tax 1/2 cent for a new jail and a host of social programs is an excellent proposal and must be supported by all Republicans who want to expand the powers of government. The taxes raised pay for all of the programs. But this plan does much more.

According to a May 30th editorial (no longer available directly but try the cached link) written by Todd Portune and David Pepper:

Because of the efficiencies our plan creates in our corrections operations and the conservative financial model we are using, our plan saves taxpayers more than $600 million over the life of the program.

Follow the numbers here. All costs ($864 million) required for this safety plan are paid for by the tax increase. However, all the savings ($600 million) this plan is to create are not being tapped. These savings will land into the General Fund, allowing for a significant growth in the rest of county government!

They could have passed a much smaller tax increase to fund the entire safety and social programs they wanted. However, by insisting on a tax hike this large, we not only fully fund our safety and social programs we also get sizable growth in all other county government programs under the Commissioner's control! This plan is brilliant and deserves our support.