The letters and questionnaires are in the mail.
Now what am I talking about? Well, what I am talking about is what will the candidates for these two offices say about the cigarette excise taxes. I sent them copies of the tax work up that was done in conjunction with the Shawnee Smoking Task Force.
Since the number of packs being purchased have substantially (we're talking tens of millions of packs) declined the question that needs to be asked is what will make up for the lost tax revenue? Remember, the excise tax does not necessarily go towards smoking related issues or healthcare. Everytime the state needed money it was an easy target.
Some of the options are to increase the existing excise tax, increase another tax, create a new tax or cut back on services.
It will be interesting to see what these candidates have to say since their predecessors (State Sen Nick Jordan and State Rep Judy Morrison) did a Tijuana Two Step and avoided direct answers. You can view previous blog posts of mine on this subject and those two individuals. Jordan is now running for Congress and Morrison is retiring.
The candidates who got the letters, back-up info and questionnaires are:
10th SENATE DISTRICT
Michael Bolton
Pete Roman
Mary Pilcher Cook
Sue Gamble
23rd REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT
Mark Talia
August Bogina III
John Crabtree
The candidates were requested to return the questionnaires by 7/25. That way we can post them prior to the primary election. Any questionnaires received after that date will not be posted, as we don't want candidate's to have an unfair advantage and feed off of other candidate's responses.
