ST. LOUIS, Missouri — After the city of St. Louis settled an expensive lawsuit to refund an estimated $26 million in illegally collected earnings tax to remote workers who live outside of city limits, Mayor Tishaura Jones rolled out her opening act in a push to try and replace that lost revenue in future budgets.
At a Monday afternoon press conference, Jones signed a four-page executive order forming a "Long-Term Revenue Advisory Council."
Jones will soon appoint 12 people to the panel. She ordered her own staff to assist her appointees in their work.
In the aftermath of the court ruling blowing a multi-million-dollar hole in the city budget, Jones' order highlighted "the importance of additional funding," she urged the panel to detail "implementable long-term revenue strategies," and advised them to design ideas that don't "disproportionately burden residents with lower incomes."
Prior to the court ruling, Board of Aldermen President Megan Green suggested that if the city should suffer a blow to the earnings tax, it could force the city to slash spending on police or other essential services. However, nothing in the mayor's executive order instructs the panel to explore spending cuts. Instead, it repeatedly urges them to find ways to grow revenue streams.
The directives look a lot like Jones is nudging the panel toward presenting her with an outline of some version of a progressive tax increase, but when she was asked if she was open to raising taxes, she recoiled at the suggestion.
"No, you're putting words in my mouth," Jones replied. "I am saying that we want to make sure that people enjoy living in the city and enjoy all of the amenities that 1% tax contributes to."
The panel, which will include staff who work for the mayor, the mayor's Budget Division, the Comptroller, the Collector of Revenue, the City Treasurer, the Board of Aldermen, and the Federal Reserve Bank, is scheduled to publish its recommendations to Jones in mid-January, a few months before her name appears back on a ballot for re-election.
Jones' lone challenge at this stage is coming from Alderwoman Cara Spencer, the runner-up who narrowly lost to Jones in 2021. Spencer did not comment on Jones' push to form a new panel exploring ways to raise taxes, but she has previously highlighted the rate of outmigration and the erosion of a tax base in the fastest shrinking big city in the Midwest.
Now that courts have ruled remote working employees at St. Louis-based companies can save an extra 1% of their salary if they move somewhere outside of city limits, is the mayor concerned that effective tax break could lure more people to leave?
"Well, it's 1%," she said. "And we are doing everything we can to encourage people to move back into the city. The city is a wonderful place to live and work and play, as many of you also live in the city. So we're doing everything we can to make sure that people want to live here."