Washington County Quorum Court didn't pull the road millage out from under the county's cities after all.
The county governing body on Thursday abandoned, sort of, a controversial idea that would have eliminated the county-levied road millage and replaced it with a general fund millage in the same amount.
At least, the court won't make the revenue switch now.
That doesn't mean advocates for the idea won't try again next year. But, for now, the road tax spigot remains open for the cities, whose mayors let the Quorum Court know how dependent they are on that revenue.
The county gets all the money generated by the general fund tax it levies. It must share road millage revenue with its cities. The proposed switch would have allowed the county to divert tax dollars from the cities to the county government, which has a serious budget shortfall.
Looking at the issue strictly from the county government's perspective, the switch had some logic behind it.
This is a county that just adopted a 2017 budget that anticipates $4 million less revenue than the $65 million the county plans to spend next year.
The revenue switch would have made up more than half the difference, but the county's gain would have been the cities' loss.
Those cities, large and small, count on the money from the road millage to help keep up their city streets.
Collectively, they get roughly $2.2 million from the levy, although the cities of Fayetteville and Springdale get more of it and would arguably suffer most if they lost this revenue.
Understand, taxpayers who own property within those cities pay the money that the cities (and the county) get from the road millage. Road taxes paid by rural property owners go exclusively to the county roads.
There is a long history behind the road millage and the way it gets split between the county and the different cities.
Decades ago, state lawmakers decided what the splits would be, granting Fayetteville and Springdale 80 percent of the road tax revenue from each. Other cities in the county typically get 50 percent of the road taxes generated within their borders.
This is hardly the first Quorum Court to question why and it won't be the last.
But there is a political reality that is baked into this long-held practice.
It has to do with where people choose to live and build businesses.
Washington County gets a little more urban every day, with the political boundaries of cities expanding and the truly rural areas shrinking.
It's happening in Benton County, too. That county has had its own arguments between city and county officials over road tax revenues.
Even with shrinking territory in which they're responsible for roads, the counties are challenged to find enough revenue to meet their respective road needs -- or the many other service demands made by county residents (those who live inside the cities as well as in rural areas).
County officials have made efforts in the past to get state lawmakers to change the distribution of road tax revenue, but the efforts have been unsuccessful.
Again, keep in mind the urbanization of the counties and of the electorate in each. Another result has been the shift of political jurisdictions to reflect the concentration of the population within the cities.
Plenty of legislative districts in Northwest Arkansas are now strongly influenced, if not controlled, by city voters.
Even these quorum courts' respective districts are represented heavily by city dwellers with city-dominated constituencies.
That urban-rural balance will just continue to lean more and more urban.
That reality probably had a whole lot to do with what happened last week in Washington County and may hold at bay any future attempt to switch the tax millage from roads to the general fund.
Commentary on 12/18/2016