The last-minute compromise over separate city and county proposals for a 0.167-cent tax averted a disaster in city-county relations that had been brewing for weeks, officials say.
City councilors and a majority of county commissioners agreed last week to split the city's existing 0.167-cent tax as part of a $918.7 million city funding package, leaving part of the tax for a future county proposal and preventing side-by-side 0.167-cent proposals on the Nov. 12 ballot.
The agreement followed several weeks of failed negotiations to prevent that scenario - one that threatened to pit city and county officials against each other over what would have been seen as competing ballot measures.
Newly elected County Commissioner Ron Peters, who worked out the details of the agreement with councilors G.T. Bynum and Phil Lakin after initial talks broke down, said last week that he and the councilors simply "manned up" to find common ground.
"That is what changed - being able to have a constructive discussion with a county leader who just wanted to find a way for us to have a win-win," Bynum said.
City-county relations took a hit late last month when Commissioner Karen Keith and Sheriff Stanley Glanz announced plans during a July 25 news conference for an initiative petition to call an election for a permanent 0.167-cent countywide tax to fund additional pods at the Tulsa Jail and a juvenile justice center.
Several councilors said they were blind-sided and angered by the proposal, noting that they first heard of it when Lakin read a Tulsa World story during a committee meeting only weeks before councilors planned to vote over the capital package they had been developing since December.
Mayor Dewey Bartlett later arranged the first round of compromise talks with Keith and Glanz, saying he could see a battle on the horizon.
"When I called for everybody to come together, we were at a point in time when things really could have had a very devastating impact upon the great relationship that the city and county presently enjoys," Bartlett said.
Officials then were "able to come together and show that we can act as adults ... and find common ground even at points in time when it looked like we were at a standstill," he said.
The talks, attended by Bartlett, Bynum, Council Chairman David Patrick, City Manager Jim Twombly and Chief of Staff Jarred Brejcha, progressed slowly, if at all, Keith and Bynum said.
Keith was on vacation late last week, but she told the Tulsa World after the talks that city officials "never budged." She said her first goal was to have the city abandon the 0.167-cent tax but that she would have settled for "something a little less."
The city, she maintained, had no right to take the county's 0.167-cent tax in the first place.
Tulsa had adopted its 0.167-cent tax for its 2008 Fix Our Streets initiative when the county's 0.167-cent tax expired and county officials did not pursue a vote to renew it.
Bynum said it seemed that past resentments were "spilling over" into the talks - whether it be the decision to take the 0.167-cent tax or other disagreements such as several city officials' opposition to the county Vision2 initiative last year.
Bynum was among those opponents.
"We were spending as much time being shamed for ever taking the 0.167-cent (tax) over as we were trying to actually find a solution to this issue," Bynum said. "What I appreciate about the approach that Commissioner Peters took was that he wasn't there to fight old battles."
Bynum cautioned against blaming Keith too much, saying she has always been a proponent of good city-county relations but that her "passion for those very worthy projects" simply clouded the negotiations.
He said he and Lakin called Peters for a "fresh set of eyes" Wednesday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to find a compromise before councilors voted Thursday to send their funding package to voters.
Peters told them that the county would need $30 million in city funds for its projects - about half of the projects' total costs.
That was doable, Bynum said.
Peters, in a deal later accepted by Keith, agreed to delay the county vote if the city would drop a corresponding portion of the 0.167-cent tax for the county to capture in a spring election.
Peters said the concession will force the county to seek private funding.
Although councilors had previously rejected splitting the 0.167-cent tax, the new deal was a manageable 60-40 split, giving the county 0.067 percent and forcing the city to extend its package only four to five months to make up the difference.
"Did I get all I wanted? No," Peters said. "Did the city get all they wanted? No. But we were able to work through it and do what is best for the people that elected us to represent them."
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
zack.stoycoff@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Sales tax deal a 'split' decision
