MINOT -- Dedicating a sales tax to funding first responders is a bad idea.

The city of West Fargo narrowly approved a half-cent sales tax for fire protection in the 2022 election cycle. Now, Fargo's residents are being asked to approve a quarter-cent tax to fund their police and firefighters.

The firefighters' claims about their needs and funding seem rooted in fact. There's no reason to doubt them. Melissa Van Der Stad reports that Fargo lags significantly behind other communities in the region regarding funding fire protection. Fargo's budget has exploded in recent years, increasing nearly 36% from $98 million in 2022 to $133 million appropriated for the 2025 budget, yet the share of the budget devoted to fire protection has declined.

The need is real. The problem is that the sales tax, given its vagaries, is a fundamentally poor mechanism for funding a service like fire or police protection.

Sales tax revenues are elastic. They go up and down and are susceptible to economic conditions, both real and imagined. If the public isn't feeling confident about economic conditions, they shop less. Case in point, at the state level, sales tax revenues plummeted nearly 30% in one budget cycle, from the 2013-15 biennium to 2015-17. From that point to the 2021-23 cycle revenues went back up 26%, but they're forecasted to drop again by 2.5% in the current biennium.

Up, and down, and up again. It's elastic.

But demand for people to put out fires or arrest the bad guys? This is inelastic. If anything, pressure on local first responder services is even higher when economic conditions are poor.

A bad economy means lower sales tax revenues, just when demand for first responder services goes up, though economic conditions are not the only variable to consider.

Making first responders dependent on sales tax revenues isn't a new idea. On the western side of the state, Williams County has had what it calls a "public safety sales tax" since 2015. It was on the ballot again for an extension in June, and it passed, though 41% of the public voted against it.

What would have happened if 51% had said no? Local leaders obliged to meet the inelastic demand for first responders would have had to scramble to replace the estimated $24 million per year the tax is forecasted to produce. Voters, too, are put between a rock and a hard place. Having made first responders dependent on sales tax revenues, it's tough to vote against continuing the sales tax, even if they might be dissatisfied with the tax amount.

We can also discuss the other side of the ledger. What happens if sales tax revenues explode and revenues to the firefighters outpace needs? Any bureaucracy -- even first responders -- has a tendency to gobble up surplus revenues and build them into future budgets even when such growth in spending isn't warranted.

Voters in Fargo considering this measure should believe their firefighters when they say they haven't been adequately funded. They should also wonder just what it is the city of Fargo has been spending its money on instead of a basic, must-have service like fire protection.

The city spends a lot on legal services. Rather than hiring attorneys to work for the city, they outsource to the Serkland Law Firm. This cost the city about $1.68 million in 2023, according to city spokesman Gregg Schildberger. The city could spend significantly less on legal advice if it hired attorneys in-house, as communities like Bismarck do.

I received that information from Schildberger earlier this year in the context of gathering information on the city's litigation expenses in a dispute with the state over firearm regulations. Fargo's city leaders, in an act of blatant political grandstanding, have insisted that their home rule charter gives them the authority to preempt state law on the operation of federal firearms license holders. This quixotic political crusade, targeting lawful firearms commerce that had caused zero issues for the city, has cost local taxpayers tens of thousands.

Fargo's leaders are fond of these sorts of empty gestures.

In 2021, as the nation was convulsed by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Fargo City Commission created the Police Advisory and Oversight Board to bring new accountability to local law enforcement. It's accomplished nothing. "We haven't done jack squat as far as advisory," board member Scott Paul said during a February meeting.

In 2019, when environmental activists organized children into climate protests, Fargo's leaders again indulged themselves, creating the Sustainability and Resiliency Committee. Again, nothing was accomplished. "The committee began meeting in March 2021," The Forum has reported. "In the years since, the committee has seen very few tangible results."

Fargo's much-ballyhooed hate crime ordinance has also been pointless. June 28 was the third anniversary of the city commission creating the ordinance, which has resulted in zero convictions, per Schildberger. In the first year the ordinance was in place, exactly one person was charged under it -- a man who allegedly uttered a homophobic slur during a physical altercation outside a bar in February 2022.

He was acquitted.

And speaking of empty gestures, Fargo's leaders voted to eliminate their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department during a recent meeting. That's a small step in the right direction, but it hardly solves the problem.

While Fargo's city leaders have been preoccupied with performative politics and obdurate turf battles with the state Legislature, they've neglected the firefighters. Now, the men and women who protect the city of Fargo, who show up when people are hurt or in danger, must resort to what even Mayor Tim Mahoney admits is a flawed approach to getting funding.

"This community stands behind fire and police," Mahoney said in August. "But I'm not sure this is the right mechanism."

Mahoney is wrong about many things, but not this.

The correct mechanism for funding fire protection is for city leaders to budget for it correctly based on need.

It is not forcing the firefighters to ride the feast-or-famine revenue roller coaster that is the sales tax.

I'm not sure how the good people of Fargo should vote on this sales tax proposal, but I do know they're owed an explanation for why they're in this position to begin with.