Voters get chance to endorse move to eliminate property tax

HARRISBURG — Voters in November will be asked whether the state Legislature should move to allow school districts to completely replace property tax.

But the ramifications of the Nov. 7 ballot question may be less earth-shaking than many voters thinks. The measure doesn’t compel the Legislature to begin tackling the property tax issue and it offers no clue how the state would try to replace the tax, said Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.

The ballot question asks voters whether the Constitution should be amended to allow the homestead exemption from property taxes to be used to cover the entire property tax bill. Current law caps the exemption at 50 percent of the property tax bill.

The question appears to have little, if any opposition, largely because its scope is so limited.

“We’re telling people to hold their noses and vote for it,” said David Baldinger, who leads the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition, a grassroots network of taxpayers groups lobbying to get rid of property taxes.

Baldinger’s group has been working to get the Legislature to pass a plan to replace school property taxes with increased income and sales taxes. That plan came within one vote of passing in the state Senate in 2015. After the Senate deadlocked 24-24 on the plan, Lt. Gov. Mike Stack cast the deciding vote against it.

While he doesn’t like the proposed Constitutional amendment, Baldinger’s afraid that if it fails it will provide lawmakers with ammunition to argue that there’s no broad public enthusiasm for property tax reform.

Baldinger said that he thinks the measure lays out a ill-conceived strategy for property tax relief by limiting the protections to residential homes. His group would prefer to see school property taxes completely eliminated, on both residential and commercial properties.

The groups representing school districts don’t oppose the Constitutional amendment.

The measure would “set the stage” for additional debate about how the local schools should be funded, said Himes, at the school business officials group.

“Voter approval of the proposed constitutional amendment by itself will not change anything with regard to what taxpayers, school districts or taxing bodies can or must do,” according to an analysis of the ballot measure provided by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

“We would expect that any tax plan considered in the General Assembly would have to include some way to replace the money to make up for the reduction,” said Steve Robinson, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Board Association. “You can’t just eliminate taxes from school districts without a way for them to get the money from somewhere else.”