Issue Position: Property Taxes

Issue Position

Property taxes affect all of us. We all know someone -- a parent, a neighbor, a friend -- who is worried about losing his or her house in retirement because he or she is on a fixed income and cannot afford to pay the property tax bill. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Bridget believes that House Bill 76 - a recent property tax reform measure - got a number of things right, but much of it must change in order to for the bill to earn her vote. She plans to lead those improvements.

For example, it's unacceptable to give property tax breaks to huge corporations like Walmart and let homeowners and individual taxpayers shoulder the burden of educating our schoolchildren. Corporations should pay their full and fair share.

Additionally, it is unacceptable to eliminate property taxes for a millionaire from another state who owns a summer lake home at Lake Winola or a real estate investor who owns multiple dwellings.

The only way for property tax reform to work for families and individuals living in the 114th District is to target property tax relief to primary homesteads, residences, and family farms.

The current bill as written leaves the state with the task of raising roughly $14 billion a year to fund education through proposed income tax and sales tax hikes. If we take the sensible step to focus property tax reforms on homesteads and farms (and continue to tax properties other than residents' primary homes - like commercial property and vacation homes - at the current rate) the $14 billion gap in education funding is cut in half.

This is sensible reform of a tax that just too burdensome on our District.

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