by Rob Roper

A few months back the University of New Hampshire ran a poll showing that 86 percent of Vermonters found the state to be unaffordable and 64 percent of prime working age folks 18-34 were actively planning to leave. Last week the Fiscal Alliance Foundation followed up with another poll, this one asking (among other things), what would it take to make someone change their mind and decide to stay. The number one answer – don’t spill your popcorn here – LOWER TAXES.

The Fiscal Alliance Foundation poll asked a few questions around this point. The first being, “What would most increase your likelihood of remaining in Vermont?” Respondents got to choose three out of nine specific options plus “other,” “not sure,” or “not leaving.” 51 percent listed “lower taxes” as one of their top three issues.

The poll then asked what the single most important reason to reconsider leaving would be and, again, lower taxes topped the list at 28 percent. The next closest were “more job opportunities/higher wages” and “lower housing costs” neck within fractions of 16 percent.

And here’s a very interesting question the poll asked; one where slick talking, it-depends-on-what-your-definition-of-is-is politicians should take heed. “Which of the following is closer to how you would define the term ‘tax relief?’: Slowing the rate at which your taxes increase. [Or,] Reducing the amount of taxes you pay.” The overwhelming, whopping, landslide answer was — seventy percent of you probably guessed — reducing the amount of taxes paid. It won out 70 percent to 30 percent.

So tax relief is not the same thing as “bending the cost curve” (the most infuriating cop out in the political lexicon) or “reducing the rate of growth” or shifting the tax burden from one source to another, or even keeping the tax level where it is now. None of those gimmicks wrapped in doublespeak is going to fly with real people if your goal is to keep them in Vermont. So, consider this a warning to any wannabe legislator out on the campaign trail trying to peddle the notion that a 3.5 percent property tax increase is somehow a form of tax relief because it could have been worse, and pay no attention to the fact that you’re covering that reduced portion of property tax through your income tax: nearly three quarters of voters/taxpayers will leave that conversation believing you are as full of you know what as a diaper after baby’s first Taco Bell.

And here’s the good news for the politicians who really want to make a difference and actually mean it when they say we need to be doing more to keep people in Vermont and make the place more affordable: you CAN control the tax rates. You may not be able to control the market price of oil, or eggs, or plywood, but you do control (at least at the state level) the cost of the tax on gasoline and heating fuels. You control the sales tax. You control the income tax, DMV fees, and all the rest of those government appropriations and mandates that cost Vermonters money. Go lower them!

Here’s the bad news for the politicians who either really don’t care who or how many people leave Vermont or simply want to pay lip service to the issues of demographics and affordability. It’s the same as the good news. You have the power to directly affect what your constituents want you to affect, so, no excuses when you don’t do it.

And there really are no excuses here because, as we have noted in the past, Vermont’s state budget has increased 62 percent – twice the rate of inflation – over the last half decade, from $5.8 billion to $9.4 billion. You cannot tell me there is no way we can start to return to pre-Covid emergency spending levels now that the “emergency” has been over for at least four years. That there is no waste, fraud, abuse and general inefficiency in that massive, poorly supervised bloat. Cut some of that spending!

We’re spending more and more on a public education system (now $2.5 billion) that has been losing student population every year for thirty years (from over 100,000 kids to less than 80,000) – and scores are declining. That fiscal math makes zero sense. We were doing better spending less money. Cut some spending.

We’re spending more on the homeless only to see dramatic increases in homelessness. Seems like money wasted on really bad policy because, again, were doing better spending less money. Cut some spending here. Spending millions on electric busses that don’t work half the year and occasionally blow up. Maybe stop doing that and things like that and give the money back to the taxpayers who earned it in the first place.

Is cutting taxes a silver bullet that will solve all of Vermont’s problems? No. But it is a necessary first step, it’s the primary action Vermonters are asking for, and, unlike other economic factors, it completely in the control of our elected legislators to do. So, as the folks at Nike would say, just do it!

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.