Democrats Cap Property Taxes
In a special one-day session Democratic legislators re-instated the 1% cap on projects funded by property taxes that was recently ruled unconstitutional by the Washington State Supreme Court. Gov. Christine Gregoire hastened to sign the bill.
OLYMPIA — Gov. Christine Gregoire and the Democrat-led Legislature on Thursday saved another Tim Eyman tax-cut initiative from a court-ordered death.
Eyman showed his gratitude by calling the Democrats panderers and accusing them of cheating the voters.
Meeting in a rare one-day special session marked by bickering and occasional name-calling, lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill to reinstate a 1 percent cap on annual property-tax increases that was tossed out by the state Supreme Court earlier this month.
Only a handful of Democrats opposed the measure. It passed the House 86-8 and the Senate 39-9. Gregoire signed the legislation Thursday night.
The cap doesn’t apply to individual homes but rather limits increases in total property-tax collections by a taxing district to 1 percent a year.
“This bill makes things exactly the way they were prior to the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Rep. Christopher Hurst, D-Enumclaw, the bill’s lead sponsor. “It does nothing more and it does nothing less.”
Because the cap is not on individual property taxes, many individuals get stuck with a disproportionate share of the increase. My property taxes, for example have gone up much more than 1% per year over the five years I’ve lived in WA even with the limit in place. It also does not stop special levies for education or other projects.
The Legislature also approved a measure that allows homeowners earning less than the median state income — currently $57,000 a year — to defer up to half of their property taxes.
They’ll have to pay the taxes — with interest — when the house is sold.
Supporters said the bill could help financially strapped homeowners keep their homes. But critics called it a form of predatory lending that would trap homeowners with a large debt owed to the government.
Such a debt could quickly gobble up all the equity in a home, especially in today’s soft market. What happens when all the equity is gone?
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