Georgia Supreme Court Issues Final HOST ruling, doesn’t make any friends at Decatur City Hall
Darenw | July 5, 2011Per the AJC,
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that DeKalb County doesn’t owe its cities more than $10 million from a decade-long battle over its penny-on-the-dollar homestead sales tax, or HOST.
But nine cities in the county are entitled to a direct share of the tax proceeds from here on out – creating a whole new source of income for the cities to renovate buildings or take on other capital projects.
Our collective fantasies of how to spend a couple million around the city have been squashed, but the City of Decatur is in line for a nice income stream for capital projects moving forward. Steve puts the annual number at around $600,000, though that was just an estimate.
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I don’t get it. If something is owed going forward, why wasn’t it owed in the past? Or is this like “Ok, I know I didn’t tell you explicitly that you must pick up under your bed when I said you must pick up your room, but now you know going forward. When I say you must pick up your room, you’ve been warned that that includes under your bed too.”
I agree. For the life of me I just cannot grasp the legal logic of this ruling or for that matter this “debate.” My guess is that there is none.
I believe the gist of it is that the County went through this process again recently with the city of Dunwoody and the court system established that Dunwoody did deserve a certain portion of funding that also applied to the other Dekalb cities. So under that ruling Decatur and other cities had a right to HOST going forward but not back. As soon as this above case was decided Decatur and the other cities would automatically fall under this new ruling.
So, apparently the old agreement was invalid, because Dekalb didn’t have the right to enter into it, but the new one is valid.
Isn’t entering an agreement when one doesn’t have a right considered fraud?
It’s very difficult to raise children with decent morals in a county where the government is operated as continuing criminal enterprise.
The Supreme Court still didn’t do the cities any favors, though. According to the AJC, the deadline for cities to apply for the current year was July 1, and the Court waited until July 5 to issue the ruling, so no $$ this year. Also, the AJC says it could mean as much a $1M a year to Decatur. Two years of that would get the new police station/community center. Dunwoody, which granted has a lot more retail than Decatur (i.e. Perimeter Mall), apparently is getting $1.5M to $2M a year. It’s not clear, though, whether the amount is based on sales tax collected or city population.
I’m glad Decatur’s not getting back pay.