What Utah Football Has to Do with It
Suppose you’re a University of Utah football fan (as I am, when they aren’t playing BYU, and I’m sad about the USC thing last week). But your grandfather is a died-in-the wool Cougar. You know the type. In his mind, it is a holy war, and you don’t remember the last time he was willing to concede that the Utes made a good play or got a good win. When the Utes beat the Cougars, as often happens, he blames the referees. If he cannot find the slightest cause to blame them for enforcing the rules unevenly or ignoring the rules when it’s to Utah’s advantage, he complains that the rules themselves are stupid and skewed, and blames the refs for enforcing bad rules.
Suppose that in a small fit of hubris and wrath, he said to you, “If the Utes are ever ranked first in the polls, I’ll give you $25,000.”
Fortunately, his eyesight is failing. So when the Utes were ranked #4 the other week, you dropped by (as you often do, because you’re a good, devoted grandchild). This time, you said, “Grandpa, I’m going to read to you from the college football poll in order, as usual. By the way, BYU got a few votes, but didn’t make the top 25. As always, I’ll start with the last of the ten on my list and work up, because I know you like the suspense.”
Conveniently — and so you couldn’t accused of lying — you had typed up a list with ten teams in order, starting with Utah at #4. You left off the top three, but you were careful to get the next ten in the right order, because accuracy matters. You started reading at the bottom, as you said, and you didn’t give their numerical rankings. You left him thinking that Utah was ranked #1.
“I guess I’d better write you a check,” he said, because his eyes are failing, but his memory’s fine. “Better yet, you write the check, and I’ll sign it.”
Grand Larceny
You would never try to put the wrong amount on the check — say, $125,000 — even though he’ll never notice. After all, you balance his checkbook too, and there’s plenty of money in his accounts. You could probably get away with it — and if he caught you, you could say it was a mistake, and he’d likely believe you. But you would never do any of that. It would be immoral. It would be criminal.
Come to think of it, you would never deceive Grandpa with bad data, so he’d give you $25,000 on a false pretense. Not only would that also be a felony. It would be piling a sin on top of a sin. (The one on the bottom is loving money so much you’re willing to deceive people to get more of it.)
Here’s my question. If you wouldn’t do any of those things, why in the world would you publish a flier with a graphic showing that American Fork has the highest property tax rate among Utah County cities, when three cities have higher rates?
You could protest that all the numbers you put in the graph are true. And you could point out that the graph would be unreadably crowded if it showed all 25 Utah cities. So you had to leave them out. And you could protest that you never actually said that American Fork’s rate was the highest. And all of that would be true.
Do you really expect me to believe that you left out all the cities with higher tax rates just for the sake of readability? It looks like you’re trying to fool the voters, tricking them with partial truths so they’ll give you political power. (I’m sure it’s for their own good.)
You might argue, even if you did skew the visual results, the higher point you’re making is God’s Honest Truth: our taxes are too high. So that justifies taking some liberties with your graphics.
So I guess I have two more questions.
First, if it’s God’s Honest Truth, why do you have to deceive people so they’ll agree with you?
Second, would you ever trust someone like you with political power, control over tens of millions of dollars of tax revenues, and your freedom?
So You’re Not Really One of Those People
Gentle reader, I assume you’re not one them. So what can you do to help? Post the graphic below (or this one) on Facebook or somewhere, or e-mail it to your friends and neighbors. Talk to your friends, in person and on social media. Tell them what you know. Some of them will listen. And if you want the raw data, it’s here at Utah.gov: 2015 Utah Tax Areas with Tax Rates.
I have talked with the people who created the flyer that you are talking about here. They did not include Provo, Mapleton, or Vineyard because those cities do not match the size of American Fork. Provo is much larger and Mapleton and Vineyard are much smaller. They wanted to compare apples to apples. I also found out that the info on this flyer was obtained from the AF city website. The city council has accused this group of giving false information and being involved in this group I know that we went to the city council and asked them to tell us which information was incorrect and it would be removed from the flyer and the American Fork Citizens website. The council members were not able to tell us what was incorrect. Why is that? Because they know that the information was obtained from their own website. You make an accusation here that you have not verified. These people that made the flyer have done a lot of work to make sure that their information is accurate.
Ms. Pace, thanks for reading and commenting. My objection is not that the numbers AFCitizens presents do not exist. It is that they are in some cases misunderstood and/or misused, with the result that they do not represent reality and thus mislead the voters. We shall have to continue to disagree as to the nature of that reality, the good will of City officials, and other subjects.