City of Kent seeks to keep state-shared revenue

Kent city officials hope they can keep getting state-shared revenues despite the Legislature’s ongoing challenges with funding education.

Every year for the last several years the city of Kent’s Legislative agenda makes lobbying to keep streamlined sales tax (SST) payments among its top priorities. The city gets about $5 million per year from the state to help compensate for revenue lost when legislators changed the state in 2008 from an origin-based system for local retail sales tax to a destination-based system.

That change cost Kent a lot of tax money with so many businesses in the city that ship or deliver goods to other areas of the state. The sales tax is now collected where the buyer purchases merchandise rather than where the product shipped from. Kent’s estimated losses are about $12 million per year, according to a recent Puget Sound Regional Council industrial lands study.

“We expect to see pressure from the Legislature again with ongoing challenges with education funding with the McCleary decision as well the recently passed Initiative 1366,” said Michelle Wilmot, city spokeswoman who works with city lobbyist Doug Levy on the city’s state agenda. “SST has been our top priority since I joined the city almost 10 years ago. Those are significant hits to our bottom line should we see any changes.”

The state Supreme Court’s McCleary decision ruled that the Legislature has failed to adequately fund K-12 education, which could mean leaders look for other places to cut funding in order to pay more toward schools. Voters passed I-1366 in November that taxes not be increased without a two-thirds approval vote by the Legislature, another reason legislators might look elsewhere for budget cuts, if that initiative is upheld by the Supreme Court.

The City Council will vote on the legislative agenda on Dec. 8. The council’s Operations Committee voted 3-0 on Tuesday to approve the plan.

“I am absolutely supportive of the top priorities that maintain our sales tax mitigation,” Council President Dana Ralph said at the committee meeting. “It really is life or death for this community. It’s a big deal. I am grateful our legislative representatives all seem to be very aware of how important that is. We will keep having the conversation. It’s nothing guaranteed and that’s the part that makes everybody uncomfortable.”

Under the lobbying plan, Kent also seeks to restore additional liquor revenues of about $921,000 per year that have been capped the last few years at 2011 funding levels.

The city joins with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to seek $450,000 in the 2015-17 operating budget for training and overtime costs needed to ensure law enforcement personnel are responsibly and accurately using a statewide gang intelligence database.

Kent opposes any bill that might remove local control on fireworks regulations and bans. The city joined other local agencies last session to oppose Senate Bill 5914 that would have taken away local authority.