The El Paso Times Editorial Board came out against the Public Service Board’s new franchise fee, now that the PSB decided they had to charge even residential customers.
The latest step in the franchise fee saga came Wednesday, when the Public Service Board — which oversees El Paso Water Utilities — voted to add the fee to residential customers. It will result in an increase of $1.33 a month to the average residential water bill.
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Mayor Oscar Leeser, who sits on the PSB, did not attend Thursday’s meeting. He also left early from a March meeting where the PSB voted for the first time to extend the franchise fee to all customers.
The fault for the franchise fee mess lies entirely with the City Council, which added the water franchise fee at the last minute during the fiscal year 2015 budget process last August.
The council voted to add $4.75 million late in the budget process, too late to even consider a property tax to pay for the wish list.
Instead, the council voted levy a $3.55 million franchise fee on El Paso Water Utilities, with a request that the fee only be applied to commercial customers because homeowners already were bearing the brunt of property taxes.
I guess now that the election’s over the Times can call out City Council’s bad behavior.
The step was denounced by the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce and others as a hidden tax. That is a correct description.
It also was a fundamentally dishonest approach to government. There was no talk about the necessity of a water franchise fee until the council needed to fill a revenue hole in the budget.
And the hole developed because council members voted to add millions of dollars to the budget late in the process. Council rebuffed recommendations from City Manager Tommy Gonzalez to cut expenses, and decided instead to look for franchise fee options.
I missed this editorial earlier, because I, like most El Pasoans, don’t always read the Saturday paper. That’s also the reason, I suspect, that the Times runs its most inflammatory stories on Saturdays.
With all the fiscal irresponsibility and fundamentally dishonest approaches to government in which City Council engages, it’s curious that El Paso’s only English language daily only picked this one to denounce.