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Floor Remarks by Education
Committee Chairman
James J. Rhoades (R-29)
on Property Tax Relief Package
I rise in support for this amendment. I think the
easiest way to put this is -- What’s that Chinese proverb? The journey of 1,000
miles begins with the first step. I think for 30 years we have been trying to
step on this and keep stepping in oil and slipping back and forth.
This may not be what everyone wants. I know it is
not exactly what I want because I have the perfect bill and I ran it a year,
year and a half ago. And the same thing that happened to me happened to Senator
Logan. The intent is there, but then again, as Senator Jubelirer said -- we
begin to look at our individual districts and how it will apply.
How do you get 26 votes together? How do you get
102 in the House? And how do you get a Governor to sign a bill? When I look at
the proposal before us -- and I remember when the Governor called a Special
Session -- I think there were two primary things he was looking at. Number one,
making the backend referendum mandatory for all school district, and the other
thing was doing away with the 1/10th EIT to be able to participate in that. But
we addressed both of those. Both sides of the aisle addressed that, so we have
met the Governor’s two requests.
But through this working together we improved on
that. We have expanded the Property Tax Rent Rebate program to 281,000 more
senior citizens -- those we consider to be the most vulnerable, those we hear
from on a regular basis. We have allowed school districts that don’t want to
use gaming funds to be able to opt out. And that has been an issue.
The other thing we added to this is a referendum.
And this is a simple referendum that starts at a very local level. If you want
to increase your EIT and eventually your PIT to lower your property taxes --
it’s a switch and don’t call it anything else but that.
There is an opportunity to do that. What are the
other choices? I looked and tried to figure this out. If we use our present
sales tax total, a 1/10 unit brings in 1.37 billion dollars. Since our total
cost is approximately 7.3 or 8 billion dollars, we would have to add
approximately 6 percent to our present 6 cent tax. We would be putting
approximately 12 cents on our sales at the present rate. Is everyone willing to
vote for that increase? Or if you want to switch that around, and as the
Commonwealth Caucus has proposed in this nice thick document, we can include
food and clothing on there and that will bring in $3 billion.
But when you begin to look at food, personal hygiene
products, clothing, footwear, caskets, burial vaults and flags to name a few,
along with -- at this time of the year -- coal, firewood, electric, telephone,
fuel oil, gas and water. We may bring in $3 billion, but then people who are
talking about the property tax being the most regressive are the same people in
here who it would be regressive on … the poor.
If you make $100,000 and I make $20,000, there is a
greater percentage of my $20,000 going to necessities versus your $100,000. So
if we want to be fair we have to move to something like the EIT or the PIT.
And I think that is the key to what has been done. This has been factored
together. This has been worked on by both sides of the aisle to come up
with a proposal. That is the first step. The House of Representative for
three weeks debated and debated . We have debated and listened. And the end
result is our first step we are taking today.
I would ask for an affirmative vote on this
particular amendment.
 
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