House panel submits report on property taxes
Posted: Tuesday, December 4, 2012 5:55 am | Updated: 7:32 am, Tue Dec 4, 2012.
Posted on December 4, 2012
A report by a House committee studying property tax reform didn’t come up with a plan to fix a decades-old problem, but the members believe the group’s recommendations will give the new General Assembly ideas to move toward a solution.
“All of us were under the impression that this would not be a silver bullet,” said Tom Quigley, Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reform. “We weren’t going to find a magic solution.”
But Quigley said the group’s efforts, which included six public informational meetings followed by four hearings on its findings, were worth the time, for an “issue that has bedeviled the commonwealth for the last 40 years. ... It’s better to have this type of discussion, this type of discourse, than nothing at all.”
The 13-member bipartisan committee was formed by Quigley’s House Resolution 774 to gather information about the many complex issues surrounding property tax reform.
State Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-153, said, “We’ve heard the cry of taxpayers: ‘please change the way we fund our schools.’ Everybody agrees that local property taxes are not as equitable or as fair as they can be.”
She said the committee “collected a lot of valuable information and will go back to their standing committees to craft legislation that looks at the funding formula.”
The recommendations in the 20-page report, which can be found at pahousegop.com, were adopted unanimously. They include for the state to:
- Allow for a homestead and farmstead exemption of up to 100 percent of the property value. The state constitution allows for a 50 percent exclusion of the median homestead’s assessed value.
- Develop legislation to grant local taxing jurisdictions more diversified taxing options that allow revenue-neutral tax shifts in the collection of local revenues.
- Review all state-imposed public education requirements that are not mandated by federal statute or regulation, for cost-effectiveness, fairness and/or educational value.
- Develop a new funding formula for special education, based on the actual costs of providing special education instruction and service.
- Determine the true costs of educating a student at a charter school and at a cybercharter school, and the effects on local school budgets and property taxes.
“We have tried to come up with recommendations that will garner broad-based support in the General Assembly,” said state Rep. Justin Simmons, R-131, of Lehigh and Northampton counties.
He called the recommendations a “road map for change.”
State Rep. RoseMarie Swanger, R-102, of Lebanon, said “This is not an easy fix, not an easy issue to tackle. So many components enter into this.”
Quigley said the recommendations were “low-hanging fruit that should have been taken care of a while ago.”
He developed his resolution in June after House Bill 1776 — the Property Tax Independence Act — was tabled. That legislation had been touted as the solution to the state’s property tax woes.
It would eliminate residential property taxes and replace the local revenue by increasing the sales-tax base, the sales-tax rate and the personal-income-tax rate.
A recent report by the state’s Independent Fiscal Office found that revenues provided by the proposal would be $1.5 billion short in 2013-14 and grow to a $2 billion shortfall in 2017-18.
Swanger, a proponent of HB 1776, said 10,000 Pennsylvania families lose their homes each year for failing to pay property taxes.
“It is unconscionable that in 2012 the property rights of Pennsylvania citizens are jeopardized by property taxes,” she said.
The plan has drawn mixed reviews from local lawmakers.
Reps. Marguerite Quinn, R-143, and Steve Santarsiero, D-31, have spoken out against it. State Rep. John Galloway, D-140, is a fan.
“It doesn’t get rid of property taxes ... it’s not the right way to go,” Santarsiero said.
Quinn said the measure wouldn’t be a tax cut, but a tax shift, and the shift would hurt area districts.
“When we send a dollar to Harrisburg, we get back change,” she said. “Your property taxes stay local. When we raise a dollar locally, we get that back, dollar for dollar.”
Said Galloway, “First and foremost, the property tax is killing people in my district. People whose kids graduated from school 35 years ago are still paying this tax. It is something that scares the living hell out of them.”
Quigley, who represented the 146th District of Montgomery County, wasn’t re-elected last month. However, Dean said she is in the process of proposing a new resolution for the committee to continue its work.
“I think we have an opportunity here, and I don’t want to see this work evaporated,” she said. “I think we’re on the way to good ideas.”
2 comments:
I will hold my breath waiting for property tax reform.
You'll be blue.
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