A Cole County businessman on Thursday asked the County Commission to use existing resources to end the wrangling over the county surtax.
Bill Gratz, a former state representative who lives in the Blair Oaks School District, said it was unfair that Blair Oaks is being sued to pay back a larger sum of money than other county school districts and municipalities are.
The surtax is charged against commercial property, and lawmakers created it in the 1980s to replace the Merchants and Manufacturers Tax.
They also wrote a formula to be used for distributing the tax money, but a mistake made in the Cole County clerk's office apparently changed the distribution formula, resulting in some entities - including Jefferson City government - getting substantially less than it should have received, while others got too much.
Although the situation went on for 20 years, lawyers have said only the last three to five years' payments can be used to balance the inequities.
"At first, I wanted to come here today to ask you to consider a repayment plan out of county half-cent sales tax money," Gratz told commissioners. "However, as I visited with county residents, I have abandoned that idea.
"The tax has done so much good all across the county that we cannot put the passage of this sales tax in jeopardy."