Unlike other commissioners (Carter and Allen) who broke faith with the promises they’ve made to be fiscal conservatives, Pam Thompson’s support for more taxes and higher spending was, at least, consistent.
During the five years she’s been on the board, she has voted for all three property tax increases that were enacted (in 2023, 2024, and 2025), and against both tax rate reductions that were adopted in 2022 and 2021. In 2024 and again this year, she provided the pivotal third vote to push the increases into law.
Cumulatively, she has supported a total 18 percent increase in tax rates, over 15 percentage points of which were adopted in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
[Editorial continues below chart on Thompson and other commissioners’ votes on budgets and tax rates.]
Long criticized by conservative members of her party as a RINO (Republican in Name Only), Thompson earlier this spring gave up that partisan identity to become officially unaffiliated.
Still, like Carter, she’s often portrayed herself during election years as more thrifty and fiscally conservative than she actually votes. Last year, as noted in our Sunday editorial (reprinted on page 2), she claimed to want to keep the current tax rate steady as she was campaigning for a second term, but this week she voted to increase it by 2½ cents per $100 valuation.
So we at least have to give Thompson a partial pass on honesty, inasmuch as she’s pretty well revealed, consistently, her preference for higher taxes and more spending – particularly for the school system, which she once headed as chairman of the school board.
And she offsets those spending tendencies by being more tight on some other areas of county spending, most notably the Taj Mahal court complex county officials have in mind.
