Nearly a century ago, filmmaker Mack Sennett knew where to draw good source material for successful farce. He just looked to institutions of authority. His Keystone Kops shorts were hectic marvels of incompetence, barbs at people in charge who obviously shouldn’t even have been in charge of getting themselves dressed in the morning.
Befuddled, clueless and gawky officials make for funny movies. It’s not quite so humorous, though, when the bumbling is real, and the harm moreso.
Hartford has a long tradition of putting its head in the sand, hoping problems will just go away if it pays them no attention. For years, city leaders have tried to avoid any hint at all that taxes on homeowners might have to go up. First, the city simply imposed a 15 percent surcharge on businesses. That worked for awhile.
Then it was time to revalue real property in the city. It turns out, the value of residential property went up faster than the value of commercial property in Hartford. This took the city’s leaders by surprise, because while they were running around the neighborhoods angling for votes, they didn’t notice that people who buy commercial properties weren’t rushing into deals to buy in a city that beat them up with taxes just for the temerity of being a business in Hartford.
Because a municipality is supposed to spread the tax burden somewhat fairly, the revaluation meant that residential owners would wind up shouldering more of the city’s tax burden, because they now owned more of the city’s wealth. Since homeowners vote, but frequently not for politicians who cost them money, the City Council opted to just ignore the revaluation for a while. Like, for years.
Eventually, though, even the city “leaders” couldn’t keep ignoring the problem. For one thing, state officials kept reminding them they had to obey the law. And city businesses just got sick of it and began moving to towns that didn’t punish them for bringing in jobs and commerce.
So last year, Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez literally marched on the State Capitol building to get a special law passed for Hartford that would allow the city to phase in its already decrepit revaluation. This would ease the burden for homeowners, and calm the jitters of big commercial companies who feared they’d never see any tax relief.
The law Perez fought for had one drawback, though. Since the city keeps spending more money each year, somebody actually has to pay the increasing taxes. Just two weeks before the end of the legislative session and only a month away from a new fiscal year, the city just discovered that — since it’s protected residential owners and big business concerns — it’s going to be small businesses getting gored this time.
Couldn’t anyone see this coming a year ago?
Now, small business owners are screaming bloody murder, that they’re going to bleed red ink and die if this tax plan becomes real. Hartford’s city council and mayor have the answer: Ask the legislature for another two-year moratorium on implementing revaluation, so they can have time to study the issue.
Meanwhile, given a chance to actually cut the budget (which would also have brought down the proposed tax hike on small businesses), Mayor Perez demurred. Spending less isn’t an option, in this celluloid world of governing.
Mack Sennett would be pleased by this kind of chaos. But the legislature should pass on any quick fixes. When movies resort to a deus ex machina device to set everything right, you know you’re watching a bad film. When governments do it, you know you’re watching the Keystone Kops.
