OPINION: Stonington's Chesebrough floats plan for towns to share in sales tax

When I caught up with Stonington First Selectwoman Danielle Chesebrough, to ask about her proposal for giving towns a cut of state sales taxes, she noted at the outset that it's not a new idea.Indeed, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has been lobbying for a long while for cities and towns to get a bigger share of the state's sales tax haul.Town leaders' tongues hang out at the prospect of a 1 percent sales tax of their own, whenever it's dangled.I think it is an idea that is usually dead on arrival in Hartford, where distributing the spoils of existing taxation is a body sport, and, well, cities and towns aren't directly represented.The state has coughed up a small sharing formula for sales tax revenues, and it's hard to think municipalities will get much more.And, honestly, who thinks anyone is going to vote for a new tax entirely, or give municipalities the authority to start one?Still, the argument of giving municipalities more skin in the game of taxing going on in their communities is certainly reasonable. And with Connecticut's abysmally high national ranking in the levying of property taxes, you can understand why local leaders are hungry for some other kind of revenue.I learned of Chesebrough's own initiative when it appeared as a submission to the General Assembly's new task force studying the future of Mystic tourism.The first selectwoman suggested in her proposal that municipalities get a small share of sales tax generated in its borders, or as a function of population size.She posed some scenarios, based on a share of sales taxes ranging from 0.25 percent to 1 percent, that would produce revenues for Stonington of $1.6 million to $6.5 million.That's an alluring target. But when you multiply those figures by the number of state cities and towns you can imagine the big raspberries among lawmakers the idea might get in Hartford, where sharing is not a favorite thing.The idea seemed to get a cool opening reception at the tourism committee, which is looking at things like transportation infrastructure and climate impacts for tourism in Mystic.The committee is meeting regularly and is expected to deliver a report by early next year.Chesebrough said she raised the idea with the committee because Stonington shoulders so many costs of tourism development while the state keeps most revenue from sales taxes generated from tourists.She said she has discussed the proposal, which she said she developed with the help a college intern, a graduate of Stonington High School, with state Rep. Aundré Bumgardner and plans to talk to other lawmakers about it.Bumgardner said he is open to the idea of the diverting more existing sales tax revenue related to tourism, especially lodging taxes, to communities impacted by tourism.He said he would be against any new taxes, except maybe on short-term rentals, which already pay the same sales tax as hotels.It's true that short-term rentals are probably one of the few things I can think of that are so unpopular that very few people, except maybe the operators, would complain about taxing them more.This is the opinion of David Collins.d.collins@theday.com