The House ways and means committee today considered a constitutional amendment that would get rid of donor towns by capping the statewide property tax at local education costs. As NHPR?s Josh Rogers reports, the issue drew support from the so-called donor communities, and mixed feelings from everybody else.
The situation in Portsmouth and its surrounding towns has become desperate.
That?s house republican Raimond Bowles on the statewide property tax??According to Bowles??.sky rocketing property values have exacerbated inequities in the so-called state education tax to the breaking point??Bowles? Portsmouth House Colleague Jim Splaine stressed it?s time for lawmakers to face the fact that taxing property is unfair because it doesn?t necessarily reflect a persons ability to pay.
'What we need to do as legislators is find a tax structure that is fair to people?..And the way that the property tax is implemented today is not fair to people.'
At present 57 communities pay more in property taxes than they receive in state education aid. Those communities ?donations? to the state education trust fund will total some 32 million dollars for next year alone. Amendment proponents say remedying that problem will be a good first stop on the road to further tax reform. Again representative Jim Splaine.
'I don?t know if this is going to be an entire answer. But I do know that this pushes it along and we end up opening the issue to good people, good senators like below and fernald who say that we ought to have serious tax reform.'
But Senator Mark Fenald, an income tax supporter and mortal enemy of all property taxation, says Spaine has it dead wrong. He says the amendment would only weaken the cause of true reform.
'It?s a step to nowhere We need a solution for the entire community of New Hampshire. What we have here is something that will only benefit 20% of the state. If the donor towns already have it why woulf they vote for it?.When you got 20 percent automatically against something you are starting to fight uphill.'
Others amendment foes, have different concerns. Some say it would be wrong to create a 32 million dollar shortfall without proposing how to fill it. Others, like Derry republican Frank Sapareto say the amendment would simply perpetuate an already bad policy of taxing according to location.
'This CACR says we?re still going to still use geographic location to create different tax rates. What we?re effectively doing is we?re telling the guy up in Berlin that he?s going to have to pay 4 or 5 times tax rate while were lowering the tax rate of someone with a second home in one of the towns with one of the lowest tax rates. It?s just not fair.'
Sapareto says the best way to solve the problem would be to introduce what he calls an income-sensitive property tax??.Meanwhile the house is also considering several other plans to reduce property taxes??These include an amendment that would bar the state from using any property tax revenue to fund state education spending?..???as well as a plan to reinstate the property tax sunset clause.
