City of Riverside Asks Strickland to Line-Item Veto DeWine's Tax Ban

From the Dayton Daily News:

On Monday, state Rep. Kevin DeWine of Fairborn added a provision to the state budget legislation which would effectively prevent Riverside from continuing the tax.

DeWine's proposal would take effect on Aug. 1. It would forbid municipal taxation of people employed within a U.S. Air Force base that is used for housing Air Force members and is a center for Air Force operations _ unless the taxpayer happens to reside within the community imposing the tax.

Anticipating DeWine's action, Riverside drafted legal arguments saying that his proposal would violate a 1940 federal law known as the Buck Act which allows a "duly authorized taxing authority" to levy income taxes on people within a federal area.

Riverside also contends that DeWine's proposal violates the Ohio Constitution by differentiating between a U.S. Air Force base and an installation like the Defense Supply Center Columbus, where the Columbus suburb of Whitehall taxes the income of civilian Defense Department employees.

Riverside is asking the governor to use his line-item veto authority to strike DeWine's passage from the state budget before approving the budget, said Riverside's law director, Philip B. Herron.

Based on the reportage I've seen thus far, it would appear that the legal argument is likely to be won by the City of Riverside. And I just can't imagine Taxin' Ted going along with Kevin DeWine when there is tax money to be collected. We're talking about a figure between one and four million dollars here...and everybody knows that government can spend your money better than you can at any rate.