Last week Clark County Chair Sue Marshall, along with Glen Yung, Wil Fuentes, and Matt Little, voted to raise building permit fees, increase school impact fees, and—for the first time—impose fire district impact fees (as detailed by Paul Valencia from Clark County Today). These decisions don’t help housing become more affordable. In fact, you’d have to be completely disconnected from reality to think that could possibly be a good idea right now, when it’s becoming harder and more expensive for families to buy, build, or stay in Clark County.
This is not an isolated event. Under Marshall’s leadership, the Council has repeatedly chosen higher taxes and fees—almost every tax or fee increase presented. She supported the maximum 1% property-tax increase plus banked capacity in three of the four budget cycles since she took office. The Council also approved two new 0.1% sales taxes that together add 0.2% to the local rate. Once fully implemented, these measures—property-tax increases, the new sales taxes, building-fee hikes, and expanded impact fees—are projected to add roughly $17–20 million a year in additional burden.
Let me repeat that: Sue Marshall has added to the annual tax burden by $17–20 million a year when all is said and done.
As I detailed inReformCast Episode 32, “when you start adding them up you quickly realize that Sue Marshall has increased the tax burden on Clark County more than any other elected official.” Glen Yung has called some of the individual increases “small.” Added together, year after year, they become large. That’s how incrementalism works. It’s not the big increases that get you—it’s all the little ones when you add them up.
Sue Marshall, Wil Fuentes, and yes, the newest Democrat Glen Yung (recently sought and received the Democrat endorsement), have raised the tax burden on Clark County taxpayers at almost every opportunity and at historic rates. The only Councilor who has consistently resisted is Councilor Belkot, who voted against the increases.
But wait, there’s more. It’s not just the Democrats on the County Council. Democrat Charter Review commissioners opposed the only two amendments aimed at greater fiscal restraint and housing transparency: the supermajority requirement for future tax increases (Charter Amendment 25) and clearer analysis of how new policies affect housing costs (Charter Amendment 24). Those amendments are on the November ballot, and Democrats are actively trying to defeat them. Think about that. Charter Amendment 24 would simply bring more transparency to the escalating costs of housing—and Democrats didn’t want you to have the opportunity to vote on it or, dread the thought, approve it. And they REALLY don’t want a supermajority requirement for future tax increases, because what would they do with all their time if they can’t increase your taxes?
When you add all of this up, the Democrat yard signs that say “Support Affordable Housing” become pure propaganda. At nearly every available turn they vote in the opposite direction—raising the costs of building, buying, and living here (and don't get me started on Democrats in Olympia).
Stop the madness. Stop the tax increases and stop voting Democrat, or we all will have to move out of Clark County in the near future.
