So That Others May Pay

By Bob Decker
February 8, 2009

The question, “What is a conservative?”, is longstanding, allegedly dating to 1819, when Chateaubriand appropriated the word for use in a political context. An intriguing answer to the question was provided in 1953 by (conservative) author Russell Kirk, who described conservatism as “the negation of ideology.”

These days, many so-called liberals out-conserve so-called conservatives in several ways. Liberals conserve land and natural resources better, they conserve energy better, they conserve voting rights better, they conserve individual privacy better, and they conserve the constitutional rights of speech, religion, and (in Montana) a clean and healthful environment better.

But conservatives are truly conservative in issues of spending and taxes, right? Well, maybe, if you focus only on the non-negated ideology of “no new taxes.” But if you look at how conservatives are freer with spending and taxes if they don’t have to pay the bills, the answer clouds up in a hurry.

SB 129, a bill to allow tax credits for “wildfire mitigation conservation easements” on land parcels in the wildland-urban interface, was introduced by Sen. Dave Lewis (R-Helena valley and rural Powell County) and heard before the Senate Tax Committee on February 4. According to the measure’s fiscal note, “This bill creates a new type of conservation easement for wildfire mitigation and allows taxpayers who create such an easement to take a credit against individual income taxes for the value of the easement, with a maximum credit of $100,000.” A parcel must be 160 acres or larger to qualify for the credit.

As a rule, and to add etymological confusion, conservatives don’t like conservation easements. Such easements discourage development, transfer tax responsibility, and suggest that environmental consideration may trump the economic.

In this case, however, Sen. Lewis recognized that the use of a conservation easement was a way to address the issue of fire protection in the wildland-urban interface, a subject he addressed in depth as a member of the Legislature’s Fire Suppression Interim Committee. Lewis knows that the costs of firefighting are increasingly attributable to the protection of suburban residences, not natural resources such as forests, and he knows that the state’s firefighting bills are growing ever larger (the 2007 Legislature appropriated $80 million dollars in the state’s general fund to fight fires in the current biennium).

Sen. Lewis chose the conservation easement approach to minimizing fire risks and lowering the state’s financial burden because, as he emphasized during the committee hearing, he wants a “voluntary, not mandatory” solution to the problem. As a conservative, he doesn’t want the government to establish laws or otherwise regulate how suburban home- and landowners manage their property.

Alas, in matters of taxation, one person’s incentive is another person’s mandate. In this case, giving a tax break to people who build structures or own property in fire-prone areas means that the taxes of others must rise. By not mandating that residents of the wildland-urban interface take old-fashioned conservative responsibility for their own fire protection, Sen. Lewis is mandating that other people pay for it. In fact, in his own modest way, Sen. Lewis may be accused of using the tax system to transfer wealth. Be still, thy conservative heart.

Sen. Lewis contends that by publicly subsidizing fire protection in the wildland-urban interface, the firefighting bills of the state will decrease over time. There’s validity in that argument, but it ignores the question of why the state is paying so much for fire protection of suburban development in the first place.

Further, residents of incorporated towns and cities in Montana, who comprise over half the state’s population, already pay for their own fire protection through their municipalities’ local tax levies (more on this by The Policy Institute here). Now Sen. Lewis is asking them to also underwrite fire protection costs in the wildland-urban interface, albeit with the salve that they’re also buying some environmental protection via conservation easements.

Sen. Lewis isn’t alone in negating the ideology of no new (or transferred) taxes. Of the dozens of bills in the current session that seek tax credits, tax exemptions, tax abatements, or other forms of tax relief, many are sponsored by Republicans, the traditional torchbearers of conservatism. And why not? As long as both parties in the Legislature agree that revenue holes caused by new tax breaks are not filled with new methods of taxation, what’s a little tax shift between friends? It’s an idea much older than conservatism.