19 April 2018 — 0604 mdt

The tobacco tax poll behind I-185

Later today, reports Mike Dennison at KXLH, the people behind I-185, the tobacco tax increase and expanded Medicaid extension citizens initiative, will announce the organization that’s been formed to run the signature gathering campaign, and if the initiative makes the ballot, the electoral campaign.

Montana’s hospitals, working through the Montana Hospital Association, are behind the initiative. And their campaign is based in part on a poll of 500 Montanans taken in mid-December, 2016, by Moore Information. The poll’s 21 March 2017 summary begins on page 38 of the 102-page, 13 MB, MHA Board Meeting Materials dated 16–17 August 2017.

When asked which taxes they would be willing to increase, Montanans identified just two: tobacco and alcohol: Here’s a screenshot of the results.

The poll’s respondents were willing to spend the sin tax revenues on property tax relief, but much less willing to do that than to spend it on helping veterans, funding schools, or balancing the budget.

Tobacco taxes fall most heavily on the poor and the less well educated because those are the social-economic classes with the highest rates of smoking. They are also some of the people least likely to vote. That makes them a safe target for a tax increase.

This will be promoted as a campaign to reduce smoking, always a good things, and to incidentally repeal the 2019 sunset of expanded Medicaid in Montana. Some of the money raised will pay the state’s share of expanded Medicaid. I-185 does not mention what will pay for expanded Medicaid if the tax discourages smoking to the point that there’s not enough sin to pay for expanded Medicaid.