Report Inappropriate Comments

Rick,

You testified once and you made the statement that the taking of the car taxes was just like what the "mafia" did. Totally embarrassing. Your quote. However, no to beleaguer once again your inaccuracies.

Just some minor corrections on numbers in this report and the current facts:

Warwick car tax revenue is $24, 683, 738.00

109,000 cars in Warwick

Increasing the exemption back to $6000 removes 28.9% of vehicles on the tax roles. That also means that many less bills to process and the labor cost savings in which to do so.

Net revenue loss to the city is about $4 million + or - a couple of bucks

Here's why the Mattiello plan is a failure from jump.

1. The man is unable to recite the revenue facts for his own city which I have cited above for Warwick.

2. Implementation of any plan as of this date will not work as the budgets for the coming fiscal year have already been made, and, in-particular, the Vehicle Value Commission has already adopted the presumptive methodology for taxation for fiscal year 2017-18. It simply will not work for this year and it will not get passed as Mattiello has not thought out the process. Dope doesn't even know the numbers for his own city, shameful.

3. Any departure from the NADA values system will require complete new software for the registry and for all of the cities and towns as the DMV buys the values from NADA and they import them into the computer program. How confident are you that Rhode Island can implement a new computer system correctly? Uh, not very.

Here's why the Raimondo plan wont work this year.

1. Again, the Vehicle Value Commission has already adopted the presumptive methodology for taxation for fiscal year 2017-18.

2. Her plan as stated is for "calendar year 2018, which is fiscal year 2018-19. So she has bamboozled all of you that aren't paying attention. And car taxes are derived from the previous year days on the registration roles so there would be no savings until 2019-20.

3. She decided to adopt the bill that I authored moving the value from the "full clean retail" to the "average trade in value" per NADA. She has stated that "all taxpayers will see a 30% reduction in car taxes this year". Unfortunately, the IVY league scholar herself has not done the math as the reduction across the board reduces the values on average approximately 14% - 16%, and she doesn't understand that the tax is from the previous year on the days the car was registered "LAST YEAR". DOPE

4. She also has not done the math as to what the loss of revenue would be to the towns and what the reimbursement number would be. Not withstanding the fact that 8 towns still have a $6000 exemption which complicates her entire formula.

Summary - Both Mattiello and Raimondo used this issue for political purposes. Unfortunately for them, it will become their political death. Currently , to save face, there is only one thing that can be done immediately to make the issue go away for 99% of the people, including the loudest mouth on the issue, me. The only simple option which can be done with the stroke of a pen, does not require a bill, and does not have cause to depart from the existing NADA values, is simply to re-institute the mandatory $6000 exemption state wide to all city's. Now there is an even playing field, Mattiello and Raimondo get a pass, the issue goes away quietly, and they can get on to the business of being useless once again. The bonus is that this is the only thing that can be done this year. All they have to do is figure out what the reimbursement is to the cities and towns and find it in the budget. They only need to look at the budget of DOT and cut it out of that department which is filled with waste.

Just remember who you heard the facts and the fix from first.

Just once I would enjoy reading a quantitative analysis from "THE NON-TAXPYERS MAYOR