Progress on public safety.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Few thought the Lane County Public Safety Task Force had much chance of success when it began searching last June for a way to pay for sorely needed police and crime prevention services.

After all, voters had consistently rejected county public safety measures, big and small, for more than a decade. More recently, the county's proposal to form a new public safety taxing district had run aground when the Eugene City Council refused to approve necessary land-use plan amendments.

County officials could have reacted by pressuring the city to yield. Instead, they wisely invited representatives from all of the county's 12 cities to help find a solution to the public safety crisis.

Two other critical changes followed: The task force refocused its efforts on the raging methamphetamine epidemic, which is driving increases in crimes ranging from identity theft to child abuse. Then it wisely recognized that the problem was unlikely to be solved with a single massive proposal and that taking a smaller first step had a far better chance of success.

Now, the county stands where few expected it to be - tantalizingly close to settling on a promising strategy for addressing the intolerable and declining state of public safety programs.

Last week, the public safety task force forwarded two alternatives to the county commissioners. Both a sales tax and a last-minute proposal for a gross receipts tax on businesses would raise $60 million with revenues dedicated to county-funded public safety programs ranging from youth services to adult jails to drug treatment. Each would be offset by a $38 million reduction in county property taxes, with the county reducing its current property tax rate of $1.28 per $1,000 by $1 per $1,000.

While the task force deserves an ovation for its hard and gutsy work, it also needs a reality check. A sales tax proposal is simply a non-starter in Lane County - or anywhere else in Oregon - regardless of how worthy are the services it would fund. If Oregonians were asked to vote on a sales tax that would be used to save their own homes from falling off a cliff, history suggests they'd reject it by a hefty margin. County commissioners should shelve the proposed sales tax at the outset, and spare themselves and voters unnecessary expense and anguish.

That leaves a gross receipts tax with an accompanying property tax offset as the primary option. While the task force's proposal lacks detail and needs additional study, the idea has substantial appeal, and might have a chance at actually winning voter approval - or, if commissioners choose to simply enact it, of surviving a referral.

Under the proposal, businesses generating more than $250,000 in annual revenues would pay a tax on total gross receipts. The tax would be structured on a sliding scale, with the largest business paying the maximum 0.5 percent.

It's unclear how vigorously large businesses would oppose such a proposal. Unlike a sales tax, companies paying the gross receipts tax could deduct it from state and federal taxes. Like individual taxpayers, they would also benefit from a rollback in county property taxes. Such features, in addition to the obvious benefit of dramatic improvements in public safety, could help blunt opposition from the business community.

From the county's perspective, a gross receipts tax could provide a dependable and long-term source of revenue that would pay for public safety services that now devour nearly two-thirds of the county's general fund. Such a tax could prove especially critical if Congress scales back or kills a program that currently provides federal funding to Lane and other rural counties in lieu of federal timber payments.

County commissioners must also decide whether to simply enact a new tax (and face the possibility that it may be referred to the ballot) or ask voters to approve the tax at the outset. While both approaches have merits, enactment has the substantial appeal of showing strong leadership.

Whether commissioners choose either a gross receipts tax or sales tax, they should put a charter amendment on the ballot that would lock in both the tax rate and the property tax rollback. Failure to do so would fuel suspicions that future county boards might take back the property taxing authority or raise tax rates without voters' approval.

Commissioners should also do all they can to keep the funding focused on the fight against meth. For the most part, the task force's proposed $24.5 million budget does just that, although county officials might have a hard time making a linkage between meth and proposed funding for structural courthouse improvements and covering projected county general fund deficits.

The county should press ahead on the task force's recommendations with an eye toward the May election. But officials also need to do their homework on the gross receipts tax proposal, especially in the area of providing accurate revenue projections. The time for nasty revenue surprises is during the planning stage, not after a tax has been approved by voters.

Finally, county officials - and voters - should remember to think incrementally on public safety. The current crisis is of a magnitude that defies easy or quick solutions. But, thanks to the efforts of the county's public safety task force, the county is on the verge of taking an impressively bold first step.