CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - A group of Wyoming lawmakers on Thursday expressed support for continuing state payments to counties and local governments to cover the permanent repeal this year of the sales tax on groceries.
Members of the Joint Revenue Interim Committee voted unanimously Thursday to have staff prepare a draft bill to address the payment issue.
The lawmakers agreed that the bill should call for paying local governments $19.7 million a year for two years to cover revenues lost from the repeal. That figure is the latest state estimate of how much the repeal of the grocery tax costs local governments.
The Legislature in 2006 approved a two-year repeal of the grocery tax in a budget bill. That repeal included granting local governments $46.6 million to cover their revenue losses through June of 2008.
Local governments haven't lost significant money from the tax repeal yet because the state money approved in 2006 is still being paid out. However, local government officials have been pressing to secure a permanent source of funding from the state to cover them into the future.
The Wyoming County Commissioners Association presented the revenue committee with a resolution on Thursday. It states that the association, 'demands a permanent reimbursement to local governments for the revenue lost by the removal of the sales tax on food, with a balanced formula that approximates as closely as possible the actual losses of each county.'
The Wyoming Association of Municipalities proposed a complicated formula that called for increasing the local government share of state sales tax to make up for the food tax repeal.
George Parks of the association said that with the repeal of the sales tax on food, local governments lost a dependable source of income that wasn't subject to the boom-and-bust cycle of the energy industry and which increased over time to keep pace with inflation.
Rep. Pete Anderson, R-Pine Bluffs, committee co-chairman, suggested that the committee order legislative staff to draft legislation that calls on the state revenue department to continue making payments to local governments in 2008 and 20009 as it been doing since last year.
Anderson said he expects the committee members will vote by mail whether to endorse the draft bill as a committee recommendation in the budget session that starts early next year.
Rep. Ken Esquibel, D-Cheyenne, said he wasn't comfortable putting up money for local governments for only two years. 'Then we'll be back here two years from now, doing this all over again,' he said.
Rep. Tom Walsh, R-Casper, said he agreed with Esquibel. However, Walsh said the issue of how long the funding should continue would be debated in the full Legislature.
Sen. Jayne Mockler, D-Cheyenne, said that although she voted to instruct staff to draft the bill, she wasn't committing herself to supporting the payment to local governments during next year's legislative session. She said the state will receive crucial revenue projections before then that will tell lawmakers how much money they may expect to have available.
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