Episode 65: How We’ll Pay The COVID Debts

Description:

Discover how cities plan to pay for the COVID crisis. Tom speaks with a city councilman from Phoenix who shares how local governments have been and likely will continue to tap public funds to pay for COVID. Small businesses and investors will be particularly burdened by government actions.

SHOW NOTES:

02:53 – How Are Local Governments Impacted By COVID?

05:37 – How Are Cities Funded? 

07:02 – How Are Local Governments Making Up The Revenue Lost By COVID?

09:01 – How Are Public Pensions Impacted By COVID?

09:59 – How Are Local Governments Planning To Deal With COVID In 2021?

14:54 – Will Cities Order Future Lockdowns?

19:09 – Why Are City Taxes Guaranteed To Increase?

23:01 – How Can Small Businesses Best Navigate COVID?

Transcript

Announcer:

This is The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Welcome to The WealthAbility® Show where we're always discovering how to make way more money and pay way less taxes.

            Hi, this is Tom Wheelwright, your host, founder, and CEO of WealthAbility®.

            So there's been a lot of discussion about money when it comes to the COVID crisis and where's money coming from and where's it going? And who's going to pay for this? And today, a very special guest, Sal DiCiccio, he's a good friend of mine. We've known each other for many, many years. And Sal is a member of the Phoenix City Council, has been for many, many years.

            And I'm just dying to have this conversation because we talk a lot about the federal government, there's a lot of focus on the federal government and what the federal government's doing, and there are some focus on state government. But really you have all these cities and what are the cities doing? And how are the cities dealing with this? And what's going on from a revenue standpoint and what might go on from a tax standpoint? So this affects all of us in our businesses, whether you're in Phoenix or whether you're in any city, every city has to deal with this.

            So, Sal, it's great to have you with us today. Thanks for coming on.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Thank you, Tom. And thank you for putting this information out. You always do… You give people the edge is the way I look at it, on what's happening out there, that they don't get a chance to see through the mainstream media. You really do.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

That's for sure. There's not much independent analysis going on mainstream media right now, that's for sure.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

No.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So, Sal, if you could just a little bit of your background, both on the council and then as a business owner.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, I'm a business owner, but at the same time I've been on the Phoenix City Council this term since 2009, and I'm hitting into my last two years. I'm looking forward to it and just to get back into business and enjoy my family and seeing the impact of government, what it can, and how it really destroys lives. And how it has such a negative impact on people when it could have a positive impact.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Interesting. So, all right, we were chatting a little bit earlier about what your costs are. Let's start with the costs to the city. When it comes to city, we know that the state has hospitals and they have to deal with that and they have out-of-pocket costs there, what are your costs and what is it the cities are having to deal with?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, the cities, generally, as a general rule, don't get themselves involved in the medical side of it, they don't get themselves in the hospitals or schooling. Now, Chicago, that's part of the city, but most cities don't do that. So most cities, the cost is indirect, if any. The direct costs would be more towards like we own the airport or the taxpayers' own the airport, that with loss of revenue there, we have police and fire that have to deal with COVID. But outside of that, very little.

            And so in this last CARES Act, this CARES Act was meant to really prop up the economy and get people going, just like anything else, it became a big scam for these big cities. Any city over 500,000 in population got direct funding from the federal government. Direct funding. And those monies were meant to help us with the COVID, help us with the testing and all that. So out of $293 million that the federal government sent of your money, Tom, and everybody else's money that's listening in on this, was sent to the City of Phoenix. $1 million was spent on testing of the public. That's it.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

That actually explains a lot given the little amount of testing that we've had in Phoenix early on.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Right. It's been horrible. Think about it, that was the number one thing everyone talked about, “We got to test, we got to do contact tracing. We've got to do all those things.” $1 million, that's it, that was spent. And my guess is that this is happening around the country. The rest of it went into basically, a slush fund to fund these small, so-called community groups that then hire protestors to go out there and protest. And it was spent on arts programs. Some of it went directly into businesses, but small amounts. And so at the end of the day, the majority of the money went to government and government went it to prop up their own budget. At the same time, while everybody else was suffering in the public, that small business owners, everybody else, they were barely making it. Government was able to take care of themselves with these monies. And now they want more. I would say to the President, “Do not do it.”

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Interesting, because of course, that's one of the big sticking points on this new stimulus package is the Senate doesn't want to give money to the states. And the House wants to give billions and billions and billions of dollars to the states, which I presume the states means also cities?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Mm-hmm.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

But God, I have to believe that you've had a huge loss of revenue because if you would just explain, I don't think the public necessarily knows this, where do monies come from to fund the city?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, every city is a little different. But most of us have basically, the stools of the chair, you have your property tax, your sales tax, and then you have additional revenue that are in there that you collect from fees and things like that. But that's pretty much it. For the City of Phoenix, sales tax is about 42% of our budget, then we got another 15 to 20% that come from property tax. Whereas cities back east, they rely more heavier on a property tax. So it all comes down to a combination of how the cities just basically tax their public. And some have income tax, we don't.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

But sales tax is a big part, almost 50% is sales tax?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Yes.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

And those revenues have got… you mentioned that the city owns the Sky Harbor Airport, one of the biggest airports in the country, and the airport has been substantially empty for a long time. And I know that the restaurants, Sky Harbor is one of the first airports to really fill up with really nice local restaurants. And I happen to know that a lot of those restaurants have just gone out of business. So is the money that you got from the federal government making up that shortfall? Or is there going to be some kind of a tax increase, like a sales tax increase or something that you're going to have to do?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, let's take the airport and our general fund together. The airport got another $140 million, so they got additional monies to do what they wanted to do. Oh, no, this whole thing has been nothing but a disaster for the federal government and we're paying for it as taxpayers, okay?

 

Tom Wheelwright:

For sure.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

So what's going to end up happening is the City of Phoenix is obviously part of the lobbying group that wants more money from the federal government. We are fine right now. We put at least $143 million of the COVID money that went, supposed to go to testing and COVID-19 and all that to protect the public, we went to protecting our budget. So at the end of the day, we should be okay. We had a projection about $50 to $75 million in losses, I think it's going to be higher. But with the amount of monies that came from the federal government, and every state is stealing from the federal government, so let me be more direct about that. And so with those monies, I think we're going to end up being okay.

            But cities are going to cry, “We're poor,” because they want to fund themselves. That's exactly what it's coming down to. So here's where the biggest crunch is going to be, and you know this better than anybody, these pension costs are driving the cost of government higher. So it forces Phoenix to do things like this, to steal money from other areas that the public needs and needs to be protected, it's going to become nothing more than a pension paying machine. So it's all circular.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I know we've had many discussions about the pension crisis from a taxpayer standpoint. Just to give people a little bit because I think a lot of our listeners don't know about this, our friend, Robert Kiyosaki recently wrote a book about Who Stole My Pension, which is about teachers pensions, in particular, going out of business really, going bankrupt. But those pensions for the fire department and the police department who we want their support, they're certainly not going bankrupt now, are they?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, they sort of are. Their pensions are horrible right now, at least in the City of Phoenix. But around the country, not all of them are. So it really comes down to what area of town that you're in and how you handle those pensions. But what ends up happening, it's nothing different than a credit card. You're adding more and more debt, and as you add more and more debt, your minimum payment goes up, which means you can't afford to do anything else. So when you see deteriorated streets, you see lack of services and this complaining… even though your city may be getting more and more money is because it's paying more and more toward these pension crisis that we're all in, that Robert has been amazing at.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Yeah, interesting. Get out your crystal ball, Sal. What do you see happening in the next six months to a year when it comes to government and whether it's city government? What conversations have you had? I know you've had some conversations with health officials. What do you see coming down the pike?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Let me give you at least a concern I've got with the COVID. So I really believe that this lockdown, extended lockdown, was a major mistake. And let me explain why I believe it is and why it's going to have an impact on local governments too. So one is on the medical side of it, is that you're going to get herd immunity one way or the other, either through our official ways of vaccination or you get it by people getting sick, and they create the wall around those people that are vulnerable. So the short-term lockdown is what I'll call it, was meant to get the hospitals ready so that they can be prepared. So now what happened, most governments have extended that out. By extending it out you've kept people away, healthy people away. And they're what I consider to be the less vulnerable.

            Now what happens, Tom, when COVID-19, which is a type of flu, it's part of the whole coronavirus meets the common flu? People that are normally healthy and less vulnerable are now going to be facing a crisis. Because what happens when a healthy person gets the flu and COVID at the same time? So I think that in the next few months, we'll know by the end of September, that's when the flu really starts kicking up, what this is going to be. And so if that starts to occur, you're going to start seeing another shutdown. And another shutdown means loss of revenues, which means now cities are really going to have an impact.

            So this lockdown not only did it cost us $3 trillion and maybe $4 trillion, and just a horrible time and people losing their jobs, more suicides, domestic violence, violence increases people. People don't… they're not taking into account all the ancillary effects of the shutdown. And how many people are going to lose their homes? A lot. So once you look at that, then you combine the medical side of this that I believe, I'm not a doctor, but once these two things merge and hit at the same time because of this lockdown, I think we're going to have a bigger crisis coming forward. And I hope I'm wrong.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I'll get back to this in a second.

            Hey, if you like financial education, the way I do, you're going to love Buck Joffrey's podcast. Buck's a friend of mine, he's a client of mine, he's a former board-certified surgeon and he's turned into a real estate professional. So he has this podcast that is geared towards high-paid professionals. That's who he's geared towards. So if you're a high-paid professional and you're going, “Look, I'd like to do something different with my money then what I'm doing, I'd like to get financially educated. I'd like to take control of my money and my life and my taxes,” I would love to recommend Buck Joffrey's podcast, which is called Wealth Formula podcast with Buck Joffrey. I hope you join Buck on this adventure of a lifetime.

            So, obviously, what happened, and let's talk about what happened in Arizona, what happened was we had a lockdown, it was a short lockdown. And then the southern states all opened like really quickly. And I've always theorized, and this is my theory, this is the theory of Tom Wheelwright, that the reason they did is because there was some pretty strong feeling that the virus would not survive the heat. Because typically we don't have the flu in the summer. If this is a flu type virus why would we have this in the summer? But they did open up quickly. And of course, Arizona had horrendous results. Our friend, the cardiologist, was saying that they were doing triage at the hospitals where they had to decide life and death before they even… so they didn't even treat some patients, which is hugely stressful for the… and of course, then the families are just devastated by this.

            So you had a huge impact on the hospital system when that opened back up. And so what is the cities tend to do is say, “Oh, well, then we need to shut back down.” And so what do you see as the prospect for shutdowns? Let's take Phoenix as an example, you have Governor Ducey, who's a fairly conservative governor, business owner himself, and then you have the cities, Phoenix, which is not nearly so conservative as a-

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Or at all.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Or at all. It's a much more liberal location than the state is. And of course, one of the big issues also has been a lack of consistency between city and state and federal. So what do you think is going to happen when it comes to the virus hits again like this? Do you see Arizona going into another extended shutdown? Do you think the hospitals are going to be able to handle it?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

I hope not. And yes, I do believe that hospitals can handle it. The whole reason for the first shutdown was for them to ramp up. So if you take a look at the shutdown, take a look at New York. Remember how bad it was at the very beginning, I believe they reached a type of herd immunity there, and you're going to see less and less cases. Likewise, when people went into their homes and the virus just didn't go away. I had a conversation with the governor's office on this. I said, “You've got to warn the public that that virus is still lingering out there,” and it only takes one. You could be completely free of it, one person comes in and all of a sudden that's when it happens. With7.5 million people that's going to happen, Tom.

            So we didn't do a very good job of warning people that the virus is still out there. But once you've opened it up, you've now started getting people through this process of getting this herd immunity. It sounds cold because everybody's life matters for sure, 100,000%. But at the end of the day, people are going to be getting this and if you start doing another shutdown, all you're doing is putting people away. Then you've got to expect the vaccine to come in. Then you've got to get about 70% of the public vaccinated or some type of herd immunity. So once they get that, Tom, then you're pretty well protected and people are still going to get it, but not to the degree.

            But if we go through another shutdown, I believe it's going to be worse. And the delay-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Interesting.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

… I think, is even worse than what we've done because in the summer months is when you want that flu virus out there, as a general rule, if it acts like most other flu viruses. But boy, once the winter comes and you still got that COVID around because people have been shut down, I think it's worse.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So let me ask you a question just very practically. First of all, do you think Governor Ducey will shut down the state again?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

No, I don't. I've had conversations with his office. I hope that he does not do that. I think that would just be a horrible mistake, financially and medically.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

And what about Phoenix?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, Phoenix always wants to shut everything down. The politicians in the City of Phoenix want to keep everything shutdown until there's a vaccine, which means next year. So at the end of the day-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Interesting.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

… Yeah, most cities are run by the left. They just are. Whether you're in a conservative state like Georgia or even parts of Florida, the cities themselves are dominated by the left. I'm the outlier of the city. If you think about it, it's very few people talk like this in government. So what ends up happening is they will always follow the national mantra, it will be a knee-jerk reaction rather than looking at the facts.

            You have another dynamic that's occurring across the country that's happening here in Arizona. The hospitals only see what the hospitals see. And they see crisis every day. That's all they see. So they're the ones that really pushed the lockdown hard the first time, and have been pushing it behind the scenes still because that's how they see the world. They're still 99.7% of the population that's out there that lives under a different world and a different aspect. So if you talk to the hospitals, they see it one way.

            If you talk about it to most of the other doctors that are out there that own the surgery centers and places like that, they should never have been shut down. Think about it. They're probably one of the most cleanest places on the planet. They just are. Of course, they're going to have disease, they're going to have things in there because people are sick, but people going in for day to day operations and things that they needed to be taken care of, why would you shut them down? You would not. But that's what we did.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Well, [crosstalk 00:18:34] clearly some of that was because they had no PPE. They were very concerned about will the doctors have masks, will the doctors have aprons, et cetera. So clearly, that was part of that and hopefully, that part is passed. What do you see if, let's say, the government does not provide another round of funding to the states and the cities, will the cities be able to handle this or will they be forced to raise taxes?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, they're always going to say, they're going to come up with one excuse or another to raise taxes, that will always exist. I think that would be a serious mistake on the federal government's part to fund the states and the cities. You're also going to be funding bad behavior in the past because there's really hardly any way to prevent that. So I would take the states, the cities, the local governments out of the equation, the ones that really need the help are the local businesses, the small business owners. The large guys pretty much take care of themselves and they find a way to take care of themselves, Tom. But the small guy, they're the ones that always get screwed. They really do. They're the ones that need to be taken care of.

            A good friend of mine owns quite a few shopping centers with small business owners. I asked him a little while ago, I said, “What would you consider to be success?” He goes, “Sal, if I could save 70%.” I said, “So that means 30% are going to lose their business that they work their entire lives for?” He goes, “Yes.” He goes, “It's the saddest thing I've ever seen. Mom and pops that have saved for their entire lives, try to create a nest egg for themselves, and they're going out of business.”

            And very few people have been concerned about them or talking about them. They're the ones that should be the focus. Even your independent contractors, your real estate agents, people like that, those individuals, everybody has been suffering through this thing, except for the government. The government has always been getting a paycheck. They've been at home, they have been able to do their things at home, they don't want to really go back to work. Why should they if they're going to get a paycheck? So the small business owner, in particular, has been screwed out of this entire process.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I'm curious, what percentage of government leaders and local leaders come from the business community? In other words, have any business experience.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

In Phoenix, I'm the only one that has his own business and things like that. I'm the only one out of nine, but I would lay odds most don't. Most come back as community leaders, those kinds of things, and so they get elected. They know how to run campaigns. They know how to get people motivated, that kind of thing. They know how to generate people out to the polls.

            Business owners don't. They run a business, they take care of their families. They volunteer for their kid's softball and baseball games. They do those things. They hope that other people would take care of them, but they haven't. They've done a very bad job.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

So do you think that's one of the reasons that… it would appear that particularly the cities don't understand that you can't just shut down and start up, shut down, and start up again, as a business?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Exactly. You lose your clients or your customers.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

No, not just that. I'm thinking, I have a friend who owns a couple of franchises. They had a bunch of beer. Well, what do they do with the beer? It's not like beer lasts forever. And so they had a real issue with having a huge supply of beer and what do they do with it? In the bottles, they were almost giving it away with the takeout orders. But with the kegs, you can't do that. So it's that type of stuff. Or ordering food if you're a restaurant, how do you maintain your food? How do you maintain your staff? A lot of people have gone, “Well, I don't…” A lot of people don't want to go back to work. Some of them because of health concerns because they might have, even if they're young, they might have a parent or a grandparent that is at high risk. Others because they don't want to go back to work because, frankly, the government's paying their wages, why should they go back to work? So the staffing is an issue. So any ideas about how to deal with that?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, you've got to give people incentives. Incentives always work. You know this better than anyone. What is it? 46,000 words in our tax code, those are all incentives in there.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

They are.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

They are all geared toward what? Guiding you to where you should do it. It's basically, people think that-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

I'm glad to hear you've been listening to me, Sal-

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Oh, I listen to you, you're good.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

… that just makes my heart feel good.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, even on my Facebook post today, I talked about the tax code being an incentive-based code. It tells you where to put your money, where to put your time and how to invest. It tells you everything. It's a book. Not that I've read it all like you. You know every word in it, Tom, that I know already. But that's what is it's. So likewise, if you want to do something, you've got to give people incentives to go back to work.

            And disincentives. You've also got to create that, you've got to have the carrot and the hammer in both hands. The carrot and the stick is the right terminology. But at the end of the day, if you don't provide that and you just provide an incentive not to go to work, well, that's what people are going to do. Humans are humans, you're not going to change our social nature in order to do something that's just outside of our best interests.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Interesting. So in the few minutes we have left, one of the things we always like to do on The WealthAbility® Show is talk about a few practical things people can do. So if you were a business owner, which you've been for many, many years, what would you do in order to deal with this crisis?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Well, that's a really tough one because every individual business is different. From my end, I do more on the commercial real estate side and invest in projects and things like that, so I pick things that I see coming. So I think the office market is going to fail. People just don't want to go back. A large company… a friend of mine, that's doing a project with me right now as a lender that has about 40,000 employees. They polled every single one of those 40,000. 35,000 said they did not want to go back into an office setting. Well, of course not. Period.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Ever?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Ever.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Wow.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

So what is that going to do to the office-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Wow.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

Yeah, just as an investor looking at it, you want to look at that. People see that as a problem, but you can also see it as an advantage. Now, how would you repurpose that? So we know the industrial market is growing by leaps and bounds because people just moved into, basically, online services. That's just what they've done. So you got to look at what you see the trends are. Don't see things as problems. Don't ever look at things as a problem. Look at it as an opportunity and how will that be repurposed?

            So every business is going to be different. And I'll give you one more thought too. So if you look at it, remember what happened with the driving, the fuel costs, and all that stuff, and how that changed people's attitudes toward driving. Well, mine hasn't changed even though in Arizona we're about $2.40 a gallon, but California is $5 a gallon. So my driving habits readjusted and changed.

            So I believe that pandemics and crises like this really speed up what already was coming. This was already coming in this direction, but it just put everything in hyper-drive. So now people are working more from their homes and expecting to work from their homes more. So you're going to see less and less of those types of services. So as a business owner, you got to be thinking how the rest of the public thinks, not how you think, but how does the world see it? And that's what you ought to be looking at.

Tom Wheelwright:

This is what I love and thank you for that, Sal. I noticed I've got, there's two groups of people I spend time with. And one is the business owners and one is everybody else. The entrepreneurs, not just the business owners, but the real entrepreneurs like yourself. And what I find is that the entrepreneurs always look at this as an opportunity. They look at an emergency as how can I emerge with an opportunity here? And one of the things that we know is that we have to adapt very quickly right now. But we can adapt to something better, not the something thinking that things are going to remain the same. I think that's one of the things I'm hearing from you, thinking that something's going to remain the same is a huge mistake.

            It's like, frankly, I think that the people who are unemployed thinking that they're going to be able to continue to get employment, might be a big mistake. But what they ought to be thinking of is, “Well, wait a minute. I'm at home, I've been sitting, I've been on my computer online. I've been surfing the internet or I've been watching Amazon Prime or whatever, and maybe there's an opportunity to start a business here.” Maybe instead of having a single customer, which is what it is to have a job, you have one customer, that's what happens when you have a job. Maybe I want to have many customers, so they don't have so much risk going forward.

            I always thought it was funny when people say, “Well, I'm going to get a job because that's the conservative thing to do.” I'm going, “I'm not understanding how having one customer is the conservative thing to do.” To me having lots of customers would be way more conservative. If you're thinking about you've dealt with banks for your whole career, in lending, if you had one customer, is the bank going to lend to you? And the answer is, well, no, it's too much risk. And yet we think that a job is not risky.

            So certainly, I love what you're saying. That's my analysis of the situation as well is that we really need to be adapting. We need to be looking at what are the opportunities here? And I love the idea that you say that we need to think not how we're thinking, but how's our customer thinking and really looking at what are they doing? And what's their focus?

            And then I love the other part, thank you for reminding everybody that tax law is a series of incentives. And so the other thing, of course, we can do if we want to put cash in our pocket, is to reduce our taxes. Actually, the easiest way to put cash in your pocket is to reduce your taxes, because they are all incentives. And of course, those incentives change all the time, which is why I stay in business. And my network, the CPA, stays in business because they're constantly changing, literally every week, right now we're getting new regulations from the IRS, or a new law from the government, something. And so I want to thank you, Sal. If people wanted information about what cities are doing, where would they go for that?

 

Sal DiCiccio:

That's a tough call. They'd have to probably get ahold of their own city, but their own city is going to lie to them anyways. So it's really hard. I think places like your show are amazing.

            And I remember about the tax code, you taught me that when we first met probably 10, 15 years ago, whenever that was, Tom, you put that into my head, I'm thinking, “Oh my gosh, he's absolutely right. That's how I make my business decisions already.” So you did that. And you've been-

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Thank you.

 

Sal DiCiccio:

… telling me that for years, it's hit home and it's true. So I think what people need to do is they really… the mainstream media will not give them anything. It just isn't going to happen. They're going to have to search out and do a little work on their own and find people like yourself, Tom, that present them ideas that move them ahead. Because the mainstream media will tell you how bad you are. People like you, Tom, tell people how good they are and how they can move ahead.

 

Tom Wheelwright:

Awesome. Well, thank you. Sal DiCiccio, Phoenix City Council. Remember that your city may be slightly different, but really a lot of the cities tend to behave the same as each other. And while the states may seem to be very different from each other, the cities seemed to be very consistent in how they're behaving really across. And remember that there are things we can do. This is the great thing I always say it's not about the economy, it's all about your economy. And when we focus on our own economy and taking control of our own wealth, then we're always going to make way more money and pay way less taxes. See you next time.

 

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