| No Change for Kids |
22 September 2003
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Seattle's Coffee Fans Kill I-77
A rather boneheaded referendum in Seattle asked the voters to approve a $0.10 tax on $5 cups of coffee to pay for daycare and preschools. The idea got hammered at the polls about 60:40 against. The tax wasn't excessive, nor was the cause unworthy. It failed because of the naivete of its supporters.
Initiative 77 would not have taxed regular drip coffee but would have hit hipster varieties. In the end, the money raised would have been between $3.5-$6.5 million a year depending on whose figures one believes. This is an amount of money local resident Bill Gates (who just gave New York City's schools $51 million) could easily miss when emptying his pockets at night. And therein lies the folly.
This amount was so small that a tiny change in the city's budget, an increase in grant money, or enhanced collections could have done the job. Lobbying the city council, writing to the Department of Education or Mr. Gates, or even uncovering uncollected parking fines could have worked. But no, the forces of goodness decided to take it to the people for a vote on taxing their coffee. More accurately, they targeted a handful of businesses, who could afford lawyers, lobbyists and advertising and whose shops were ideal grass-roots campaign headquarters.
The result was a media campaign that made the "yes" crowd look petty and amateurish. A good idea, raising money to care for kids, got sunk because of the method. While the ends may not justify the means (really depends on the ends, doesn't it?), the means certainly matter. There are effective ones and ineffective ones. A referendum is almost always an ineffective way of raising taxes.
This is a golden opportunity for a professional politician to find $5 million without taxing coffee. The person who does that is likely to be the next mayor if he or she wants it. It's a certainty, though, that the person won't be a "Yes on I-77" alumnus.
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