Budget Chair Lisa Herbold bet big by putting the employee-hours tax into her revised balancing package, knowing that it didn’t have majority support from her colleagues. She lost that bet today, and with that her budget plan fell apart.
Continue reading Employee-hours tax fails. 2018 budget explodes.
Monday afternoon Budget chair Lisa Herbold released her “revised balancing package” proposal for the 2018 city budget. Tuesday morning she begins to lead her fellow Council members in deliberations and votes on the items in the package.
The big contentious issue, the employee-hours tax (or “HOMES tax,” or “head tax”), is still in the package, and in fact will be the first item up for discussion and vote. It won’t be pretty.
Continue reading Revised budget “balancing package” released; showdown imminent over head tax
Yesterday the City Council spent most of the day looking at 59 proposals to further refine the proposed budget for 2018. And a few of them got heated.
Today’s meetings were short and to the point.
This morning, Budget chair Lisa Herbold unveiled her first-round “balancing package” of Council-proposed changes to the Mayor’s 2018 budget. And it was not without controversy.
As part of officially introducing the employee hours tax (aka the “head tax”) into the budget process last week, Council members O’Brien, Harris-Talley and Sawant submitted draft legislation for it. Now that it’s something concrete and not just a set of talking points, let’s look at what it says, and what it means.