CHEYENNE—A bill that would have extended the life of a new long-term homeowner property tax exemption program has failed, but another that would offer 50% relief to homeowners regardless of age is still alive in the Senate.
Senate File 67, “Long-term homeowner tax exemption-revisions,” failed on a 15-13 vote on the Senate floor Tuesday. The program, which was approved last year and goes into effect with the 2025 tax year, gives long-term homeowners a 50% property tax cut if they are 65 or older and have paid property taxes in Wyoming for 25 years or more. That program has a sunset date, meaning it ends in 2027.
Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, said Tuesday that SF 67, sponsored by the Joint Revenue Committee, would have made the program effective until 2030. It also included a revision on residency, although a decision on whether a resident must live in Wyoming for six months, eight months or some other amount of time each year was not resolved before the bill failed.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, called it a “bad idea” to extend the program without knowing how much it would cost the state. He also said it could create two separate classes of people under which property taxes were not equally applied.
That bill failed in committee of the whole on Tuesday. But the Senate continues to debate property tax relief for all Wyoming homeowners: Senate File 69, “Homeowner property tax exemption,” passed its first reading in committee of the whole Tuesday, after being amended to include a 50% property tax reduction to single-family residential structures and the associated improved land up to $1 million.
“I think this is our vehicle, or the horse we want to ride,” McKeown said of SF 69. “If we do this, it’ll probably be — well, it will be the last property tax bill you see.”
Senators hotly debated whether they should include any backfill, or mechanism for making up lost revenue to local governments, in the bill Tuesday afternoon. McKeown said that at $252 million in lost revenue, the cuts represented only a 2.5% cut to the state’s total $11.1 billion budget.
“I don’t think the snowplows are going to dry up, the police are going to go away, and the fire departments are going to go away,” McKeown said. “This really is a policy decision, and that’s why I put it out here.”
Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, pointed out that the state’s $11.1 billion budget is made up of significant federal and private funds, so the cut would actually be to the state’s own $4.358 billion general fund and legislative stabilization reserve account, or savings account.
“It is not $11 billion,” Hicks said. “This money is going to come come out of those two accounts … and those accounts was $4.3 billion.”
Hicks, however, did not favor using any of that $4.3 billion to backfill local communities.
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, argued that if the state does not backfill local coffers, revenue lost under SF 69 would represent a 10% cut, not a 2.5% cut, using that $4.358 billion figure.
“We’re giving a $250 million tax cut. That’s 10%. That’s not 2.5%. That’s 10%. That’s a big deal,” Rothfuss said.
Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said that people across Wyoming must understand that property tax cuts will affect local services.
“We have to help people understand that tax cuts are directly related to snowplows. They are directly related to police services, fire services, all of that stuff back home,” Landen said.
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, said the conservative position is to not backfill local governments with any state savings to make up any difference in local revenue, if the property tax cut in SF 69 passes. Further, Biteman said that since 2019, every single county has seen property tax revenues increase, some at 65%. That, he said, has meant excess money for local governments.
“Fire trucks were running in 2019 in every single county. Police were running in every single county in 2019. Schools were funded. The sky didn’t fall in 2019,” Biteman said.
The amendment to remove backfill on SF 69 passed by a vote of 18-11 on Tuesday. The Senate postponed second reading on the bill, scheduled for Wednesday, until later this week.
The post 50% reduction for all: Property tax discussion continues in Senate appeared first on WyoFile .