More than once in the last few months, some of Benton County's rural residents have questioned the legitimacy of any opinion I might have on whether they, through their county government, should shell out any money to support rural ambulance responses.

Residents of rural areas have for years been served by municipal ambulance services in Bentonville, Bella Vista, Rogers, Siloam Springs, Springdale, Gravette and Pea Ridge. Northeast Benton County Fire and EMS is the one rural ambulance system.

Through nobody's fault and through no grand plan, ambulance service just developed that way. Rural residents were charged for any ambulance care they made direct use of, but that doesn't come close to covering the costs of maintaining an ambulance system at the ready. County government in those years provided no financial support to ensure an ambulance service existed. The municipal ambulance services took care of it. And it worked just fine, until it didn't.

The people responsible for running those services in recent years acknowledged the new realities of a growing Benton County: Meeting the emergency medical response needs of rural areas became more of a burden as local populations inside and outside the cities grew. So a few years ago, Bentonville then the other cities informed Benton County officials the free ride was winding down. It wasn't a threat pitting rural vs. city. It simply recognized that if Benton County government wanted to continue relying on municipal ambulance services to serve the rural areas for which Benton County government is responsible, a new financial model had to be adopted. County government would have to provide financial support or, if its leaders so chose, develop a new alternative to serve rural areas.

Cities never told Benton County what to do or how to pay for ambulance service. That's a decision for county officials. The cities' message was simply this: The cities can't continue carrying the financial burden of a countywide system.

Faced with that, Benton County officials have opted to seek out a new source of revenue. Their first attempt -- an $85-per-rural-household annual fee -- failed miserably in an election. Now, county leaders are weighing other possibilities, such as asking rural voters for a $40 annual fee, or seeking an increase in property taxes that all county residents, including those within cities, would pay.

With far more voters living within cities, it's hard to imagine them agreeing to a new tax for rural ambulance service when their city governments have already covered the costs of developing, maintaining and staffing ambulance systems for decades. This newspaper's editorial board opined recently that expecting city residents to add to their tax burden is tantamount to rural residents embracing a form of welfare.

Understandably, some rural residents didn't like the analogy. One woman who declined to leave her name, after heaping a "shame on you" on our editorial board, said "the rural people of Benton County are not opposed to paying their share. But the people of Benton County should be taxed equally, instead of fluffing the pockets of the municipalities."

But they're not, on many levels. Rural residents often cite as part of their decision to choose rural life an avoidance of city regulations and city taxes. And they've been able to escape responsibility for funding a rural ambulance system, not because they shirked it but because nobody ever asked them to shoulder the costs. That is, of course, until the cities did.

One dominant rural perspective appears to be this: We pay sales taxes on every purchase we make when we go shop in Rogers, Bentonville or the other communities. That's our tax dollars, and to suggest we should pay more for ambulance service is to support a form of double taxation, and that's taxation without representation.

Cities gained the authority to implement municipal sales taxes in 1981, when the Arkansas Legislature, with representatives elected by urban and rural residents, voted to give them that taxing power. In the same session, lawmakers gave counties the same authority. That sounds like representation to me.

Legally speaking, what gets taxed are local sales transactions, not individuals. The law is blind to the residency of those involved in the transaction. The buyer could be someone from rural areas or someone from Japan. It doesn't matter. It's where the transaction takes place that matters.

And so it is that when a sales transaction happens in Rogers, the city gets 2 percent. But that transaction has also taken place in Benton County, whose voters have chosen to tax the transaction at a rate of 1 percent. Indeed, Benton County gets revenue off of sales across the county. It is perhaps worth noting that most of those transactions happen within the cities that have invested in the infrastructure necessary to encourage an abundance of retailers to operate there. Think Pinnacle Hills Promenade, for example.

Everyone in Benton County is benefiting from the taxes on transactions happening within the cities. City residents also pay those sales taxes, as well as county property taxes, which go toward county services. They benefit from some county services, but not much from others that are focused more on serving the rural areas.

One gentleman told me last week he will quit shopping in the cities of Benton County over the ambulance service controversy. It's simply not fair for anyone to expect rural residents to provide more money, he said. He'd be shopping in Jane, Mo.

Fair enough. That's one reason rural residents can't lay claim to city sales tax revenue. They have every right to choose not to shop in a city and take their purchases elsewhere. But I do wonder? If, heaven forbid, that man should need an ambulance in rural Benton County, what will the response be when he calls Jane, Mo., with the expectation they should send one?

My bet is, Jane won't come.

GREG HARTON IS OPINION PAGE EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.