Dig Deeper

Dear Editor:

Regarding “Mortgage Tax Receipts Going Up” (Dec. 3-9):

I was disappointed to note that the “new” COURIER is repeating the old publisher’s bad habit of spewing financial data gotten from local government absent any analysis of the information. A finance story should provide some hard facts underlying the data which in this case may not represent good news at all.

Since home sales are depressed in Putnam the probability is that much of the mortgage tax increase comes from homeowners forced to refinance existing mortgages and paying these taxes for a second time. That isn’t very good news for Putnam residents but our local officials rarely care about who pays the taxes as long as they get them.

It is a maddening reminder of the recent past when the “old” COURIER simply joined in on County official’s celebration of record sales tax revenues rather than exploring that the increase was primarily a result of skyrocketing gasoline prices that were crushing County residents.

This latest article also continues another journalistically challenged practice of enabling local politicians to spread disinformation through the newspaper. In this instance Legislator Mary Ellen Odell was allowed to promote yet another new County tax to be charged on mortgages.

What goes unreported is whether this tax will also apply to the equity proceeds (aka new money) provided to a homeowner when refinancing a mortgage. The result is that current residents (including many senior citizens) needing to use the equity in their home for critical needs could be forced to pay ODell’s new tax on the proceeds.

Worse yet is that Odell has corrupted the mission of her County sponsored Fiscal Vision and Accountability Committee created to cut government spending by instead having it act as a sponsor of this new tax. So Odell has somehow managed to turn an initiative to cut taxes into one that actually strives to increase taxes; now that’s a story.
John J Butler
CARMEL