The Basement

But first, the back story...

Our recent flag debate was triggered by my Dad's response to my original post This Post May Soon Be Illegal. For those of you not in-the-know, my father, Dan Galloway is the City Manager of Bethany, Oklahoma – a small suburb of Oklahoma City. As CM's go, the guy is a bit of a maverick. As City Manager of Clinton in Southwestern Oklahoma he turned an otherwise useless city landfill into a dirt oval stock car race track. One that many races say is the best around – so I'm told. Once at a Oklahoma City Managers Association meeting, he solved a group problem solving icebreaker exercise that was designed to take 1 to 2 hours in less than 15 minutes spoiling the mornings agenda. More recently, he's ordered the painting of a blue line outlining the City of Bethany so that city residents know where to spend their sales tax dollars. This particular measure has garnered him national press as can be seen here, here, here, here, and here. But it's not ALL good press, there was the somewhat less publicized Egret Debacle of '98 as seen here.

Most recently and on a more serious note, Dad has been leading the charge for Oklahoma state sales tax reform. His basic assertion is that Oklahoma sales tax is collected and distributed in a disproportionate way that unfairly burdens "donor" cities like Bethany to fund Oklahoma City and Tulsa in a way that may be unconstitutional. A couple of articles discussing this are here and here. Now, according to one of these articles, Dad has written (and once upon a time I reviewed a rough draft of) a 12-page report entitled, "Local Sales Tax Law in Oklahoma - The 'Donors' are Dying." I would create a link but I can't find it anywhere – not even on the City of Bethany website. [Note to Dad: If you want people to read your paper, put it on your website.] BTW, also missing from Bethany's website – a press release page, links to all of these articles, the "Better Buy in Bethany" branding campaign, your paint can mascot, A CITY MANAGER'S BLOG!!! ...but I digress.

Oh, but there's more... this 4^th of July, my Dad's booked Kenny Rogers (Yes! The Gambler!!) to play the big free outdoor concert shindig extravaganza that Bethany hosts each year. (and yes, I'll be there singing along!)

Oh, here's just two more articles – a before and after. Here's one with a good picture of Dad lookin' real civic like and another (more recent) with his new "Now I'm really serious!" haircut.

So this is my Dad. He's brilliant and funny and I love him a lot, so naturally, I want him to be impressed with my blog...

So after some great discussion from Bob P. and Danger on the flag issue, I pinged my Dad to make sure he saw his influence on me my blog. Here's an except from his response:

Read your comments yesterday. Would like to have time to add some more but am pretty busy right now.

No problem Dad, I understand, the cat and the cradle and all that. Then – the funny thing that happened - an hour and forty-seven minutes later, I get another email from Dad ...

Subject: Eminent Domain

Just finished a brief editorial and sent to a few newspapers. Thought you might be interested.

Dan Galloway, City Manager

What !?!? Since your son's got a blog that's almost two weeks old and is read by nearly a half a dozen people world-wide you might as well email in your editorials in the hope that you'll be picked up? Well if that's not a compliment I don't know what is! Thanks Dad! Of course I'll pick this up! Oh, Dad, for future reference just go ahead and cut and paste your editorials into the comments of some unrelated post, that's what Bob's been doing.

So I read my Dad's editorial. It's not really about eminent domain – it's Dad's Oklahoma sales tax is so unfair rant. I would link to the editorial on Bethany's website, but... oh, I already covered that. [Dad, seriously, get a blog!] Well, since he is my Dad, I converted his Bourgeoisie Microsoft Word formatted document into a PDF so that it would be appropriately formatted for this blog and posted it here.

Mild misdirection aside, he makes good points and it's worth the read. His primary point (as I understand it) is that the dependence of Oklahoma municipalities on city sales tax revenue is the impetus to exercise eminent domain for commercial development. With no real alternative to city sales tax, municipalities are forced to encourage commercial development at almost any price.

I think we've recently seen some examples of this here in the Tulsa area. Urban sprawl is a horrible thing and large scale commercial development detracts from the "small town" feel of suburban communities like Broken Arrow. In terms of "standard of living" the argument could be made that Broken Arrow would be better off if, for example, the Bass Pro Shop were built near downtown Tulsa. Being built in a more centralized location would be better for Bass Pro Shop as it draws from a larger population for both customers and employees. Furthermore, it would strengthen radial growth from the metro area while minimizing commercial sprawl. This would benefit Tulsa and all of its surrounding suburban communities. However, under the current sales tax system this would mean that Broken Arrow taxpayers would be further funding Tulsa's infrastructure and municipal services instead of their own. As Dad would say, this is taxation without representation as these Broken Arrow taxpayers would have no say in elections held in Tulsa – and no say in how these tax dollars are spent. To this end, Broken Arrow has little choice but to compete head to head with Tulsa for commercial development as the demands of their population grows. Lucky for Broken Arrow, Tulsa is really lousy at this whole economic develop gig. [Note to Mr. LaFortune: This just in - Boeing is not moving to Tulsa. Maybe you should look for some other opportunities.] Ultimately, there is a tipping point beyond which Oklahoma municipalities must "sell out" to commercial interests in order to provide necessary services to their citizens. This taxation system works in direct opposition to cooperation between neighboring municipalities for the greater good of the larger community.

Bob, Danger, anyone up for debating the relative evils of the structure of Oklahoma sales tax collection and distribution? I for one would say that it's relatively evil.

Dad, send me a copy of "Local Sales Tax Law in Oklahoma - The 'Donors' are Dying " and I'll post that too, you know, because I have my own blog.