Though not nearly as troubled as the unpopular Act 72 law designed to use yet-to-materialize slot machine profits to reduce property taxes, the recently passed Emergency Municipal and Services Tax has its own share of critics.

The most recent troubles come from the tax's name, or what is now commonly known as - the EMS tax. True, EMS is the logical acronym for Emergency and Municipal Services, but the resulting confusion with Emergency Medical Services is causing trouble for some ambulance services, which depend on selling memberships to help support their operations.

It turns out that many people who have had money taken out of their paycheck to pay the Emergency and Municipal Services (EMS) Tax believe they have paid money to the local ambulance company (Emergency Medical Services). Some ambulance services report that people have produced copies of their pay stubs showing the EMS tax payment as a reason for not paying for a membership.

The truth is that the EMS tax, taken out of wages and paid to the municipality in which they work, has nothing to do with supporting the local ambulance service.

The EMS tax that many people in Butler County - and across Pennsylvania - have been paying is an updated version of the old Occupational Privilege Tax, which was raised to a maximum of $52 by state lawmakers from $10 levy that had existed for years.

The renamed tax, now known as the EMS tax is the result of late-night deal making in Harrisburg last December.

Confusion over the name of the tax is not the only gripe some people have about the new tax. Many taxpayers were unhappy with the circumstances of its last minute passage with no public discussion. Even if increasing the levy was justified, the way in which it was done appeared sneaky and dishonest.

The primary motivation for the increase in the renamed tax was to help financially strapped Pittsburgh, and to a lesser extent other cities in the state, avoid bankruptcy.

On top of its stealth passage by lawmakers, a big jump in a tax called the Occupational Privilege Tax would have likely raised legitimate questions over the value of the privilege of working in a given municipality. So, a new name made sense from a public relations perspective.

But calling the new levy the Emergency and Municipal Services Tax was a stretch. In addition to causing confusion and additional fund raising challenges for EMS services, the tax revenue to municipalities can legally be used for police, fire and emergency services as well as road construction, maintenance or reduction of property taxes. It's pretty much a general-purpose tax, but connecting it with emergency services was intended to make it more palatable to taxpayers.

If lawmakers were more honest, and hadn't been so concerned with putting a positive spin on the tax, they might have called it the "Late Night, No-Public-Discussion, Bail Out for Pittsburgh and other Struggling Cities Tax."

Most people agree, it's not so much the tax increase, but the way it was done. Giving it a different name, that doesn't create problems for ambulance services, would be a small step in the right direction.