Taxed to Death

This week, the Omaha City Council approved several of Mayor Jim Suttle’s proposed tax increases, although the amounts approved by City Council were less than those proposed by Suttle. Nevertheless, here we are, living in Omaha and paying some of the highest taxes in the nation.

The new taxes will begin Oct. 1 and call for the following increases: a $15 increase in the ridiculous “wheel tax,” bringing the annual total to $50 per car, or $10 per tire (spare tires count, too, for those of you who aren’t familiar with a wheel tax). And even if you don’t live in Omaha but merely work here, you’ll now be subjected to the $50 tax because you drive on our roads five days a week. The next tax we’ll see is a 2.5 percent “entertainment tax” on food and drinks in restaurants and bars, bringing the total tax charged on those items to 9.5 percent. (Sales tax in a true metropolis like Chicago is 10 percent.) And finally, if you own property, you’re fair game for new taxes, so you’ll see an increase of 50 cents per $100 of assessed value.

Some people who live outside Omaha or Nebraska might think we’re a bunch of whiners who just don’t want tax increases. Well, who really does want tax increases? But more importantly, Nebraskans already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation because the majority of our state is farmland. So, we still have the same amount of land and number of roads to support, but there aren’t as many people paying taxes. Thus, the individual tax burden is higher than that in more densely populated states. Add to that the very bad decisions made by our previous and current mayors, and you’ll see Omaha as a city at the mercy of its lawmakers. And they like taxes and useless buildings.

Consider the Qwest Center, a project approved by former Mayor Hal Daub. Daub promised that with the Qwest Center, Omaha would become a destination for concerts, conventions and large national events. He also promised that property tax increases would not be necessary to pay for the Qwest Center.

Daub’s plan was flawed for multiple reasons. First, it’s still Omaha, Neb. Nobody thinks of us as a sprawling metropolis or destination for anything other than the College World Series (more on that racket later). So, without a major regional public image campaign to raise awareness of Omaha as a destination, we haven’t seen the number of events that Daub promised. The building sits empty at least 300 days a year. Sure, we’ve gotten some big-name concerts — Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Bon Jovi — but not enough to justify that building. We can still drive two or three hours to Ames, Iowa, or Kansas City for major concerts. And for the few that have actually made it to Omaha, it would have been just as well to drive.

The Olympic swim trials were held at the Qwest Center a couple of years ago. So what? Sure, maybe a few people who hadn’t previously heard of Omaha now heard our name, but I don’t see any long-term benefit of having the trials here. They certainly didn’t go toward paying for that flop of a building because last year, our property taxes increased to pay for it anyway. And the parking is such a clusterfuck at the Qwest Center that some Omahans are starting to forego events there just because they don’t want to deal with the parking and traffic.

Next, we have Mayor Mike Fahey, who kowtowed to the NCAA when they demanded a better stadium for the College World Series. But rather than renovate Omaha’s historical Rosenblatt Stadium, Fahey buckled to the NCAA and offered to build an entirely new stadium, near the Qwest Center. So now, we have another huge piece of property that is being built, this one solely for the CWS to use 10 days a year. Does anyone think it’s logical to build an entire stadium that will be used just 10 days a year?

Omahans didn’t even have the opportunity to vote on the new stadium. Fahey just said, “We’ll do it,” and began building.

Fahey should have looked the NCAA in the eye and said, “Fuck off. The CWS is synonymous with Omaha, and if renovating a stadium isn’t good enough for you, then take your event elsewhere.” Personally, I think there’s a really good chance the NCAA would have compromised had Fahey not bent over and invited them to screw us all in the ass.

So, when our city’s budget fell short this year, it’s no wonder to me where all the money has gone: the Qwest Center and the new baseball stadium.

Consider another not-so-brilliant moment in Omaha history: In 2004, the Nebraska legislature nixed casino gambling in the state. You might not think this is a massive blunder, until you consider that Omaha, the largest city in the state, had the opportunity to open riverboat casinos on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. Again, this might not seem such a big deal. But consider that our neighbors in Council Bluffs, Iowa, — merely a car ride over a bridge away from us — have two riverboat casinos, as well as another casino. So all that tax money from the casinos goes to Iowa, and you can bet your grandma’s panties that there are plenty of Omahans and other Nebraskans in those casinos.


So, in order to preserve Nebraska’s conservative image, our lawmakers turned down millions and millions of dollars in tax money that could have gone a long way to improving our schools, fixing our roads and saving our asses during the current recession. But no, we’d rather give all of that tax money to Iowa.

The lawmakers cited an increase in crime and gambling addiction as a key reason to outlaw casino gambling. But Omaha has already suffered the consequences of casino gambling. You don’t really think we went unscathed just because the casinos were built on the Iowa side of the Missouri River, do you? In the mid- to late 1990s, Omaha suffered an unprecedented spate of bank robberies. In fact, I wrote several newspaper articles about the subject at the time. When I interviewed detectives from Omaha Police Department’s robbery unit, they attributed the high number of bank robberies to the then-new casinos. We’ve already suffered the consequences of casino gambling — and we’ve never seen a dime of the tax money we could have from it.

So, now we have Mayor Jim Suttle, a man who was elected merely because his opponent was Hal “Qwest Center” Daub, and no one in Omaha wanted him fucking things up again. After he was elected, Suttle hired some of his pals to replace others in city office positions — at 10 percent higher than what their predecessors were making. Suttle claimed that he had to offer more money to get good, quality people, aka his cronies.

Um, excuse me, but that’s not how it works in a recession. I was laid off in 2008. It took me 13 months to find another job in my field, and I’m making 20 percent less than I was at my old job, with far less in the way of insurance coverage (so I’m making about 30 percent less than I was). And it’s not just me. Talk to anyone who’s been laid off during this recession and you’ll find that salaries have dropped significantly. You can even talk to people who have kept their jobs and discover that they aren’t receiving raises, they’re expected to do not only their jobs but also those of the laid-off people, and some of them have even had their salaries decreased by 10 to 20 percent.

So where the fuck does Suttle get off paying his buddies 10 percent more than their predecessors with tax money from people who are making less than they were just a few years ago? And then, when his budget is out of control, he comes back to us for even more money in the form of new and increased taxes. Frankly, I’m feeling like I’m taxed to death in Omaha.

If you want a good example of what not to do when running a city, take a look at Omaha’s last three mayors and our state legislature. They’ve laid out a plan for exactly how to spend far too much money on useless buildings and refuse to bring money into the state, preferring to give it to Iowa.