The Jefferson County Commission is being inundated with form letters demanding refunds for occupational tax collected since 1999, but Commission President Bettye Fine Collins says that citizens taken in by the “scam” are not entitled to a refund and are putting themselves at risk of identity theft.

The form letters are the latest development in the occupational tax problem for the county. In 1999, Rep. Arthur Payne, R-Trussville, passed a repeal of the tax through the Alabama Legislature. Afterward, a circuit court judge ruled that the Legislature did not have a quorum present at the time of the vote, so the repeal was not legally valid.

However, in a more recent, but unrelated, court case two years ago, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the Legislative practice of an “implied quorum” was legal and binding. Sometimes, only the representatives of an affected county vote on “local legislation,” even though the Alabama Constitution of 1901 requires that at least half of the legislators participate in a vote. This practice has been called an “implied quorum.”

According to Collins, the occupational tax will expire next year, and the commission has been lobbying the Legislature, with little success, to renew the tax.

Commissioners at the Thursday morning work session said that someone had been passing the form letters out in schools for children to take home to their parents. Some of the signed letters included personal information such as Social Security numbers, commissioners said.

Of particular concern to Collins was that her name as well as the commission had been included on the form letters and that citizens might think the forms had originated from the county.

Commissioner Collins read a statement concerning the form letters.

It has come to the attention of the Jefferson County Commission that citizens and taxpayers are being solicited to sign a form letter and, in some cases, to provide their home address, telephone numbers, social security numbers and dates of birth and other confidential information for the purpose of obtaining a refund of Jefferson County occupational tax. The purpose of the press release is the inform the citizens and taxpayers of Jefferson County of the following:

1. The form letters which are being circulated did not originate from the County.

2. Completion of the form letter will not result in a refund of Jefferson County occupational tax.

3. Citizens and taxpayers should not disclose their social security number, date of birth or other confidential information to anyone who seeks that information for the purpose of obtaining a refund of County occupational tax. No County employee or elected official has contacted or will contact any citizen or taxpayer of the County with regard to a refund of Jefferson County occupational tax.

4. Citizens and taxpayers should be alert to the possibility that they can become victims of identity theft by disclosing such confidential information.

In other business, the commissioners discussed an exclusivity agreement City Stages has made with WBRC, allowing only Fox 6 to broadcast from inside the event. Several of the other television stations had contacted the commission to complain, or as Commission Larry Langford put it, they “had raised a million dollars worth of hell about it.”

Collins joked about the festival’s past money woes: “This is a public non-profit organization, of course, and they have made sure that they are non-profit for the last ever how many years it has been.”

“That’s why we can’t understand it,” Langford said. “If everybody’s promoting it, then maybe one day you’ll turn a profit.”

Commission Shelia Smoot argued for giving the other television media the courthouse steps as a place from which to broadcast, but she said City Stages had objected even to that.

Collins asked the county’s legal department to consider issue and present the commission with more options soon.

— Kyle Whitmire