The Bank Tax Fight
Walla Walla's local paper launches a campaign against the city council's attempts to grant illegal tax breaks to national banks.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Statesman is informed that some candidates for the council are being sounded as to their willingness to compromise national bank taxes in case the banks protest against the assessments levied upon their stock. Any candidate for the council who favors granting special concessions to any bank in order to win its support deserves defeat. The banks are better able than ordinary taxpayers to meet their obligations to the city, county, and state. A few months ago, the finance committee of the city council, without legal authority, agreed to throw off over fifteen hundred dollars of taxes levied against national bank stock. This procedure was plainly illegal. Meanwhile, the county treasurer has been temporarily enjoined by Judge Hanford from collecting taxes because the First National Bank claims the five-mill school tax is void. If upheld, this would cripple the district's ability to maintain schools or build new facilities.
“The banks are better able than ordinary taxpayers to meet their just obligations to the city, county and state, and they should be made to pay up or shut up.”
Public finance battles are a constant, particularly when it comes to the disproportionate influence of large institutional landowners versus the public school system. This 1903 struggle mirrors contemporary local debates in Walla Walla about tax exemptions and school bond funding.
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