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State News Release - September 23, 2002 |
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DC Statehood Green Party |
| Statehood/Green Party Calls For Fair Taxes for D.C. |
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THE D.C. STATEHOOD GREEN PARTY WASHINGTON, D.C. -- D.C. Statehood Green candidate Michele Tingling-Clemmons, running for the D.C. Council At-Large seat, warned that the Mayor and Council are planning to resolve the District's current budget crisis on the backs of D.C.'s middle- and low-income residents. "Will the solution be layoffs and cuts in essential services like the past, or is there an alternative?," asked Tingling-Clemmons. "D.C. government is telling Congress that taxes will be increased and that D.C. will see drastic funding cuts for public schools, human services, and public safety, as well as administrative layoffs, in order to balance the budget for Fiscal Year 2003. In other words, Mayor Williams and Council are placing the burden on working and poor people in D.C." D.C.'s budgetary crisis is a result of the sharp drop in revenues derived from local taxes this year and projected into FY 2003, with a $325 million shortfall. "There are several reasons for the crisis," said Tingling-Clemmons, the former State Director of D.C.'s State Agency for Special Nutrition and Commodity Distribution Programs, which oversaw school lunch, breakfast, summer food, after school, child care meals, and emergency food for soup kitchens and pantries. "The reasons include the downturn in the economy, especially after 9/11; the privatization of public services such as special education and continued inefficiencies in spite of millions of dollars spent on subcontracts and consultant fees during the Control Board regime; and huge, wasteful projects that serve regional corporate interests, such as the new convention center." "Furthermore, D.C. suffers a regressive local tax structure that soaks working people, while providing tax breaks for those in the highest tax brackets," she added. "Hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue have been lost because of the ill-conceived Tax Parity Act of 1999. We must repeal the Tax Parity Act immediately, and start granting tax relief to those who need it." D.C. Council and Mayor Williams attempted to forestall a budgetary deficit for District's FY 2003 by partially suspending Tax Parity, while continuing to enact new tax cuts for corporations, such as the franchise tax rate, and by significant cuts in services for low-income D.C. residents amounting to tens of millions of dollars. As examples of the latter, Tingling-Clemmons listed Council's impending elimination of Interim Disability Assistance, drastic cuts in school funding, and privatization of D.C. CareFirst, the area's largest health insurance provider, at the same time offering CareFirst tax breaks and huge executives bonuses ($47.9 million, pending CareFirst's sale to WellPoint Health Networks, Inc.), as well as Mayor Williams' dismantling of D.C. General Hospital, the District's only full-service public health facility, in 2001. "These measures are more than unjust, they're outrageous and an insult to D.C. voters," she said. "There's an alternative to all these harmful budget cuts, but it'll take the leadership of someone like Michele Tingling-Clemmons in Council," said David Schwartzman, chair of the Statehood Green Party's Taxation and Finance Committee. "We must restructure our local taxes so that the burden falls on those most able to pay, instead of balancing the budget on the backs of low-income residents. Besides using whatever contingency reserves are left, Council must repeal the Tax Parity Act, and increase the tax rates on corporations and D.C.'s wealthiest individuals to at least the pre-Tax Parity levels. Corporate handouts, such as Mayor Williams' wasteful plan for a major taxpayer-funded ballpark, must end. If we take these steps, we can preserve and begin to restore our underfunded social safety net and education budgets." "We also need to raise the shortfall resulting from the millions diverted from D.C. General in a lie to the citizens -- the $200 million diverted from D.C. General's Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements," added Tingling-Clemmons, "as well as the $47.9 million planned in executive bonuses from the planned sale of CareFirst, and the millions spent to put forward the Olympic bid. We need to demand that those funds be returned to city coffers, rather than left in the pockets where they seem to have disappeared." The D.C. Statehood Green Party agrees with the statement adopted by the Fair Budget Coalition in its June meeting: "We support a tax structure for the District that is progressive, i.e., based on the ability to pay, with a lower tax rate for lower income levels, and designed to insure that the District government has the ability to meet the essential needs of our residents, particularly those with incomes below self-sufficiency." The Fair Taxes for D.C. Plan, initiated by the Statehood Green Party and endorsed by several community organizations, calls for the repeal of the Tax Parity Act, lowering sales taxes on essentials, and making our income tax more progressive more like the federal structure. "We need such a plan to improve the quality of life of all in our community, whatever their income or neighborhood, by reducing class and racial disparities, and by ensuring sufficient funding for schools, local health care programs, housing, and other basic services," said Michele Tingling-Clemmons. Michele Tingling-Clemmons has served on the Mayor's Advisory Task Force on DC Residents Without Health Insurance. She worked for fifteen years as a senior field organizer for Food Research and Action Center, in which she also served as the organization's shop steward (FRAC Employees Association, National Organization of Legal Services Workers, UAW Local 2320). She is a founding board member of the National Welfare Rights Union, and a founding member of Black Radical Congress, Network of Black Women for Justice, the Labor Party, and Up and Out of Poverty Now!, and chaired Minorities Organized for Renewable Energy (MORE). MORE INFORMATION |
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State News Release - September 23, 2002 |
Home | Press | State Press |
