US cities seek to tax churches

Churches in the city of Mission, Kansas, have filed a suit arguing that they should not have to pay tax for the city's new transportation facilities.

"It makes no sense to tax churches and to limit their ability to provide their services, and it does damage to the constitutional separation between church and state," says Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents Catholic and Baptist churches in the small city of 10,000.

Although he agrees that the church-state separation is generally not an argument made by his conservative Christian law firm, he says "there should be a separation” in this instance.

According to the lawsuit filed in December, the city calculated the number of trips generated to and from a property based on a manual of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, Huffington Post reported.

Based on the manual, a church generates an average of 5.8 vehicle trips per week for each seat in a sanctuary, which leads to a fee of USD 898.77 for the First Baptist Church of Mission and USD 1,685.19 for St. Pius X Catholic Church.

Stanley said that state courts in Idaho and Florida have ruled against such fees, saying that city-imposed fees were invalid because they were not authorized by state legislation.

Mission officials, however, do not believe that churches should be exempt and deny the notion that the fee amounts to a tax.

"It was just a fair way to spread the cost among those who are generating the traffic," said Mission Mayor Laura McConwell, "to help pay for the roads that you need to bring people in either for your business or for the churches or to people's homes."

McConwell said calling the fee a "driveway tax" is a misnomer and that they had “discussed it also with our attorneys ... to make sure we weren't stepping on anyone's constitutional rights before we instated it."

"I'm pretty comfortable with what we've chosen."

While McConwell claims that her city's fees are a result of aging infrastructure, experts say economic pressures have led municipalities to levy fees on nonprofits with increasing regularity.

"Given the current economic conditions for cities, we're seeing cities are looking for other ways to find revenue in order to pay essential services," said the spokesman for the National League of Cities, Gregory Minchak.

A church-state expert at George Washington University Law School says there have always been cash-strapped governments but the current economic challenges bring about new ways of dealing with money woes.

"To the extent that they weren't willing to engage in political fights before, maybe now they're willing," said Robert Tuttle. "Maybe fees are hurting churches even more because their donor contributions are down."

The December suit in Mission is trying to stop the fee, charging that it is vague and therefore invalid.

SIC: PTV/USA