WAYNESVILLE, MO — Politicians hate to have their busy work ignored, especially during election season. Such has certainly proven to be the case for Democratic hopeful Bill Randsdall, a former state representative running unopposed in the Missouri state primary.Randsall surprised the citizens and county commissioners of Pulaski County on Friday during a candidate forum held at a senior citizen’s center when he said he did not know why the county commission had not adopted a strip club tax he had written while previously in office.
“I provided that legislation to the county commission on two different occasions and they failed to act on it,” he informed those assembled.
Part of the law he created made it possible for a popular vote of the county’s citizenry to enact a 10-percent tax on clubs, with the purpose of using the funds to launch background checks and fund law enforcement efforts related to the clubs. Although never enacted, candidate Randsall promised that he would “see the voters of Pulaski County get that opportunity.”
Although Randsall may well have hoped to paint the commission as inattentive or unresponsive, actual members of the commission indicated that they saw things differently.
“If he was a state representative for 10 years, which commission did he give that to?” asked Commissioner Bill Farnham, a Republican. He was joined in his confusion by party-member County Clerk Diana Linnenbringer, who said she remembered Ransdall coming to the county commission occasionally to talk about legislation that was pending at the time and aimed at raising the minimum age for strippers, but didn’t recall him presenting the tax mentioned during his speech.
According to Linnenbringer, it would take years of looking through meeting minutes to confirm whether or not such a presentation had ever been made.
Meanwhile, Farnham ponders the implications of such a tax by asking “Do you have to pay sales tax on a lap dance? I don’t have a clue. I understanding taxing books, but what is there here to tax?”
Ultimately, the commissioner spoke the minds of untold politicians, when he stated, “We’re being jovial and flippant about this, but I’d really like to know what we put the tax on. Is a lap dance something you can tax and draw income on? If you can collect it and we can get a share of it, let’s get it.”
Randsdall will compete against either currently presiding county commissioner Tony Crismon or fellow Republican Tim Berrier in the November general election.
