If you expected a proposed constitutional amendment that eventually would take away 23% of the City of Gadsden's budget to go unmentioned by City Council members, you were wrong.
For some, including Mayor Sherman Guyton and council member Jason Wilson, there was ire over Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre, launching the idea of a phaseout of the occupational tax at a press conference on Monday without extending the "common courtesy" of letting leaders in some affected municipalities know about it.
Jones announced the proposal that would affect Gadsden, Attalla, Glencoe, Rainbow City and Southside — the Etowah County municipalities that assess a 2% occupational tax on employees who work in the cities. The proposal would require a vote of the people, and if passed would cut occupational tax over 20 years time, dropping from 2% to 1.9% the first year, then 1.8% and so on until the tax is eliminated.