State and county officials are not certain how changes to the state’s service fee legislation suggested in Senate Bill 219 — designed to keep low-income workers from having to pay the fees — might affect the county’s $2-a-week fee proposal.
County Planner Mark O’Brien said the bill would also make impact fees — a recommended alternative to the service fee proposal to build roads — possible in Monongalia County.
Rather than imposing a set weekly fee, Senate Bill 219, introduced Jan. 15, gives counties the option to implement a service fee “in an amount not to exceed one percent of [a person’s] yearly wages or other earned income.” The bill exempts county workers who are not required to pay state or federal taxes from paying the fee.
Workers who earn less than $10,000 can qualify for the state’s low-income exclusion and may not have to file a state income tax return, according to Lee Ann Kennedy, director of taxpayer services for the state tax department.
“If your federal adjusted gross income is less than $10,000, then you do not need to file,” Kennedy said. “But you would still need to look at the worksheet to make sure that you meet the criteria.”
According to the Internal Revenue Service’s Web site, federal tax filing requirements vary based on a person’s age and filing status — single, head of household, married, etc. The minimum gross income a person can earn and still be required to file is $3,400.
Sen. Jon Blair Hunter, D-Monongalia, sponsored the bill, after hearing concerns from senior citizens and others who earn very little but would still be required to pay $2 per week under the county’s proposal. He said the changes are designed to make the proposal “a little more palatable for the opposition.”
“I agree with the objections, especially about the income problem,” Hunter said. “Certain people who don’t make a lot of money do not have to pay income tax. A lot of senior citizens do not have to pay income tax.”
Hunter said he was not sure how Senate Bill 219 would affect Monongalia County’s service fee proposal if it’s approved by voters in a special election Saturday. Sen. Walt Helmick, chairman of the Senate committee on finance — which is reviewing the bill — did not return a call to The Dominion Post on Wednesday afternoon for comment.
Monongalia County Commission President Bob Bell, Greater Morgantown Metropolitan Planning Organization Director Chet Parsons and Sen. Mike Oliverio, D-Monongalia, were not familiar with the bill and could not say how it might affect the service fee plan.
Bell said he feels no one should be exempt from the fee.
“If this guy makes $50 and this guy makes $100, how do you discriminate?” Bell said. “That would be a nightmare to administer. Quite frankly, I don’t know of any place where minimum-wage earners are exempt.”
Even if Mon County’s service fee proposal fails, Hunter said he wants the bill to progress.
“I would still like the bill to continue to give them the option down the road,” Hunter said. “I think it’s going to be hard to get this bill passed anyway.”
Hunter said many legislators may not see the need for the changes. Monongalia County is the only county in the state to consider a service fee so far, though Charleston, Huntington and Weirton have all enacted city service fees under different legislation.
At a public forum sponsored by The Dominion Post this past fall, Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, and others also suggested that changes could be made to improve the service fee legislation. As of Wednesday afternoon, a search at the state Legislature’s Web site did not indicate that any bills had been introduced in the House of Delegates this legislative session to amend the statute.
Fleischauer did not return a call to The Dominion Post on Wednesday afternoon for comment.
Impact fees
SB 219 also relaxes the requirements necessary to start county impact fees. According to the National Association of Realtors’ Web site, impact fees are charges imposed on developers to pay for capital improvements necessary to accommodate a new development.
Current state code says a county must meet four of seven specific requirements to start impact fees, including the adoption of a comprehensive plan and a comprehensive zoning law — neither of which Monongalia County has.
But the suggested changes require counties to meet only two of the seven requirements and would permit impact fees in areas that have district planning. Monongalia County has established four planning districts — Cheat Lake, Cheat Neck, West Run and Stewartstown — with a comprehensive plan for each area.
Hunter said the changes are designed to make impact fees an option in Monongalia County. If the bill passes, O’Brien said, the county would immediately qualify to start impact fees.
“I think it would be helpful,” O’Brien said of the bill. “But a lot of the problems here wouldn’t be solved because [impact fees] don’t generate a lot of money.”
O’Brien said impact fees could bring in as much as a few million dollars per year, but only “if development continues to increase.” He noted that impact fee revenue varies from year to year, based on development.
“You can’t depend on the income,” O’Brien said.
Hunter also added a measure for counties to provide evidence of growth. Counties that can demonstrate an annual job growth rate of 2 percent or more during a five-year period since the last census would be permitted to start impact fees, assuming they meet one of the other seven requirements.
Hunter said the job growth rate is a key growth statistic in Monongalia County.
“As you have more jobs, you have more people,” Hunter said. “That’s the whole idea behind why we need this type of funding and why we need better roads.”
In addition to roads, Hunter’s proposed changes will allow impact fees to pay for mass transit and nonmotorized transit facilities. That stipulation was included to permit an expansion of WVU’s Personal Rapid Transit system and other alternatives that have been suggested to reduce traffic congestion, Hunter said.
“If there are other ways to get cars off the roads, that’s great,” Hunter said. “If there’s not, we need to build more roads. But we need to be thinking 15 or 20 years down the road, rather than five or 10 years down the road.”
