Democrats offer solutions to lower property taxes

This week, I read the recommendations from the Governor’s Property Tax Task Force with great interest. The Republican failure on property taxes has been well-documented. Last legislative session they had everything they needed to fix property taxes for regular Montanans – including the revenue to pay for it – but they did what they always do and gave more tax breaks to wealthy folks who don’t need them.

Montanans are well aware of who is hurting and they know the Governor and Republican legislators are to blame.

The Governor’s task force was created as a public relations solution to quell the anger about the Governor’s inaction on property taxes. This “task force” was a political stunt that wasted time and money by holding 20 meetings over 18 months, but what did they accomplish beyond press releases? What solutions did they find that actually help people?

While all those meetings were happening, Democratic legislators put out a concise plan to offer tax relief without decimating communities. Our plan acknowledges what people already know: Montanans living in middle-class homes shouldn’t be paying the same tax rate as multi-millionaires living in the Yellowstone Club.

Our package offers $230 million in permanent relief targeted at the Montanans getting pinched the most right now. It uses tested tax policy that we know works, and it avoids collateral damage to other types of taxpayers like small businesses.

We also built off what we proposed (and Republicans rejected) in 2023, which would have given permanent tax relief for homeowners and renters.

We create a homestead exemption on the first $50,000 of every home, bringing down the amount you get taxed on and offering relief to families out of the gate. Then we lower the tax rates for homes under a million dollars, and adjust the tax rate up from there for more expensive homes.

In addition, we offer an income tax credit to Montanans living on a fixed income, renters dealing with skyrocketing rents, and families whose incomes just are not keeping up with the property tax increases on their homes.

Taken together, these policies address property tax increases in a comprehensive and clear way that Montana homeowners and renters can understand: your property taxes should never rise beyond your ability to afford them.

By contrast, the Governor’s task force proposals don’t focus on the families and workers who are hurting the most. More benefit goes to the wealthy, and they call one of their proposals a homestead exemption, but it is not. A homestead exemption is an efficient and proven policy to help out homeowners and make our property tax system more fair, and lots of other states use it. The task force proposal is complicated, untested, and untargeted – but it definitely isn’t a homestead exemption.

I guess it’s unsurprising that the Governor and legislative Republicans who refused to put forward serious solutions that work for Montana families would hold a bunch of government meetings to propose a weird and complicated policy and then call it something else.

Democrats haven’t stopped working on this issue, and we won’t stop until we deliver real relief for Montana families.

Representative Kim Abbott represents Helena in the Montana Legislature and is the Leader of the Montana House Democrats.