Secession
A part of Vermont wants to secede and join New Hampshire:
Officials in the popular ski resort area of Killington want the town to secede from Vermont and join neighboring New Hampshire in a dispute over taxes.
They say the town’s restaurants, inns and other businesses send $10 million a year to the state capital in sales, room and meal taxes, but the state returns just $1 million in state aid to Killington.
Even more galling to the town is a statewide property tax imposed in 1997 to fund schools. The town of 1,092 won a Superior Court order that called the state’s method of assessing local properties “arbitrary and capricious,” but the state Supreme Court reversed that decision.
“It kind of reminds us of Colonial days,” Town Manager David Lewis said Thursday. “The Colonies were being faced with the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, the Sugar Act. England wasn’t giving them any rights. They were treating the Colonies as just a revenue source.”
New Hampshire, just 25 miles east, has no income tax or sales tax.
Love the last line, maybe I should move.
Seems they’d fit right in with the Live Free Or Die state, though one of the Volokh’s doesn’t think New Hampshire would welcome it.
January 9th, 2004 at 3:54 pm
I wonder: How do the tourists get to Killington?
February 25th, 2004 at 9:40 pm
Same as always, up Route 4, til it changes from VT Rt. 4 to NH Rt. 4. at the toll booth. Go on into Killington, past the bran’ spankin’ new New Hampshire State Liquor Store, the Lottery center, and the Uncle Zack Bass Bordello Franchulate (that used to be the public school). Next is Henderson’s Machine Gun Shop, and immediately thereafter you turn right onto the Ski Area access road.
February 25th, 2004 at 9:41 pm
BTW: The Volokh is wrong. At a recent ceremony, the Atty Gen of NH told the AG of Vt that “we want Killington.”