A Prescription For Property Tax Relief

While she presides over a vast state government facing plenty of its own challenges, it is clear that Governor M. Jodi Rell has towns and cities on her mind. Specifically, she is worried that municipalities, carrying the accumulated burden of years of unrelenting property tax increases, are shuffling toward a political tripwire that will quickly upend whatever other plans she or the legislature may have for the future. She told reporters last week, “There will be, I believe, a property tax revolt unless we get real relief, and we need to have that now.”

The governor surprised lawmakers by proposing a limit on how quickly towns and cities may raise taxes, capping annual increases at three percent. That cap could be overridden, under the proposal, by a two-thirds majority vote of the local legislative body (the Legislative Council in Newtown’s case) and a majority vote by residents. Gov Rell is tying the plan to her $3.4 billion, five-year funding proposal for local education, which is supposed to result in property tax relief.

The Democratic majority in the legislature is working on its own budget plan, and predictably the Democrats have expressed the reticence about the proposed property tax cap, unwilling to cede leadership on the issue to the Republican governor. However the budgeting and policy battles are resolved, it is clear that property tax relief has finally commanded the attention of Hartford. That should be good news for property taxpayers, right?

It depends on whether you believe what Hartford says, or what Hartford does.

Notwithstanding all the talk about property tax relief, the legislature has loaded its agenda with new unfunded mandates for towns and cities. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has identified more than 50 bills submitted to the state House, Senate, and joint committees that impose new requirements on municipalities that will show up as line items in local budgets. These mandates would require towns and cities to provide and pay for everything from corrals for roaming livestock and first aid training for high school students to defibrillators for new public buildings and DNA tests for arrested felons.

And for good measure, both the state labor and the public safety committees have added an 800-pound-gorilla-of-a-mandate to the legislative agenda. House Bill 6956, “An Act Concerning Workers’ Compensation Coverage For Firefighters And Police Officers,” would add new specific ailments to municipal workers’ compensation liabilities for police officers and firefighters, including volunteer firefighters. The bill would establish “rebuttable presumptions” under the workers’ compensation law that would presume a work-related cause for hepatitis, meningitis, or tuberculosis (TB); for impaired health due to hypertension and heart disease (for those hired after July 1, 1996); and for multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate, and testicular cancers. To contest such workers’ compensation liabilities, towns and cities would have to prove, at their own expense, that the conditions were not work related. The cancer presumptions alone could cost towns $1 million or more per claim.

So as the governor and the legislature debate what medicine to prescribe to local governments to ease the pain of increasing property taxes, we would remind them of the physician’s first obligation to a patient: Do no harm. The best possible action in response to these proposed mandates is inaction. That in itself will constitute a significant step toward property tax relief.