BOISE — Idaho lawmakers on a joint interim committee on property taxes say they don't just want small fixes to relieve property taxpayers — they want major changes.
The panel held its first meeting at the Capitol on Friday, with presentations that filled much of the day about possibilities for improving reporting of local government, taxing district and school district budget and tax data and getting it included on state Controller Brandon Woolf’s “Transparent Idaho” data site. The joint committee plans to meet monthly through November, with the aim of proposing property tax relief measures that can pass the 2021 Legislature — as opposed to last year’s joint legislative working group, which studied the issue, but little ended up passing amid legislative jockeying between the House and the Senate.
“I believe that right now we have a window, a historic opportunity,” said the joint committee’s co-chair, Rep. Jim Addis, R-Coeur d’Alene, “to enact and recommend some long-term, structural and policy changes that can reduce the burden on the taxpayer, make the budgeting process much easier to understand for the property taxpayer and make this information much more transparent for the taxpayer so that the taxpayer has the tools to make those critical decisions on how their money is spent.”
Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, the Senate co-chair, said transparency “allows citizens to properly exercise their authority to hold those taxing authorities accountable,” and said, “Regardless of anything else we get done, we’re going to start with those pieces of transparency and accountability.”
During a break in the committee’s meeting, which stretched from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Rice said, “We’re having to start at one end of the elephant.” Asked whether the panel will be discussing widely supported updates to the circuit breaker, the main state property tax relief program for low-income seniors and disabled Idahoans that hasn’t been updated for inflation since 2006, and the homeowner’s exemption, which has been losing value since lawmakers froze it in 2016 even as home values skyrocketed in Idaho, Rice said, “Sometimes what looks most obvious really won’t solve the problem … unless you build the basis to solve the other structural issues.” He said he hopes the committee will “build as much consensus as we can.”
During last year’s legislative session, the Senate voted 31-1 in favor of legislation to increase the circuit breaker program, which covers low-income Idahoans who are age 65 or older, widowed, blind, fatherless or motherless children under 18 years of age, former prisoners of war, veterans with service-connected disabilities, veteran pensioners with non-service-connected disabilities, or disabled. Under the bill, the maximum annual benefit would rise from the current $1,320 to $2,000, and the qualifying income for an individual would rise from $28,000 to $32,000. But the bill never got a hearing in the House. Homeowner’s exemption legislation never came up for a vote in either house.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, said the committee will need to examine taxes as well as budgets if it wants to get to the root of the problem.
Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McKammon, said, "We're after a solution that's going to provide some kind of common-sense tax relief to the citizens."
The committee will take public testimony over the course of its meetings into the fall, Addis said; it’ll also hear from local governments and other stakeholders.
Said Rice, “It’s important for the public to be engaged, to talk to members of the committee, share ideas, ask questions. Because ultimately, the most important set of people in this whole discussion are the citizens of the state of Idaho.”
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July 18, 2020 at 06:02AM
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Lawmakers work toward 'structural change' on property taxes - bigcountrynewsconnection.com
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