BOISE — As concern from Idaho homeowners has swelled in recent years over soaring property taxes, the Idaho Legislature both last year and the year before appointed a study committee of lawmakers from both parties and both houses to look at possible fixes.
However, the joint panel focused largely on local government spending, recommending successful legislation and state investment to increase the tracking of local government expenditures. It didn’t recommend anything to change the increasing share of the property tax burden that’s falling on homeowners, compared with all other classes of property.
This year, the Legislature didn’t formally appoint any committee. Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, is calling on legislative leaders to do that now.
“While considerable attention is being paid to the 9.1% national inflation rate, the state is paying no attention to the unfair, unjust and undeserved property tax assessment inflation,” he said in a statement. “The Legislature is way behind the curve. Most states have had some remedy in place for years. A working group needs to be formed. We need to get to work.”
Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise, said Friday that there’s an “informal working group made up of House and Senate members that are working on property tax issues, but it’s informal. We haven’t appointed it.” That informal group includes only Republicans – Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, and Sens. C. Scott Grow, R-Eagle, and Jim Rice, R-Caldwell.
Rice and Rep. Jim Addis, R-Coeur d’Alene, chaired the last property tax study committee, but both of them lost their re-election bids in the May primary.
Gannon said Friday that he’s submitted his request and at least one GOP legislative leader has expressed interest, but he’s had no official response as yet.
Rice, Grow and Moyle met with Treasure Valley mayors and other local officials on June 30 to discuss concerns about property taxes and changes that would work for Idaho cities. There, Grow said he’s been holding meetings with stakeholders such as the Idaho Farm Bureau, the Idaho Association of Cities, and the Idaho Association of Counties on the issue.
As reported in the Idaho Press, Grow told the gathering, “We’re trying to have a group that can actually move something and not get bogged down by so many ideas, so many conflicts and disagreements between the different groups that we can’t do anything.”
Formally appointed legislative interim committees, working groups and study committees are required to post notice of their meetings and follow the Idaho Open Meeting Law; they also typically include lawmakers from both parties and both houses. But Winder said that doesn’t apply to an informal group that hasn’t been appointed. “They wanted to try and get it worked out among themselves,” he said.
Gannon is floating a proposal he’d like to be considered to shift to a five-year average for assessed taxable values, to smooth out big jumps. His proposal includes a provision that if the five-year average came to an amount higher than the actual market value in the 5th year, the property would be assessed at the actual market value.
Gannon said his idea is to deal with situations he’s seeing both in his Boise district and throughout Idaho where one house on a street sells for, say, $150,000 more than any other house there is currently valued – and that prompts big assessment hikes for all the rest of the homes, with accompanying tax increases. “It puts a fairness factor into our property tax system,” he said.
Gannon said he believes other ideas should be considered as well, and thinks his proposal paired with an increase in the homeowner’s exemption would largely address the current problem.
In Ada County, residential property currently bears 80% of the property tax burden, compared with 20% for commercial property. It’s a trend that’s been intensifying for years, as home values soared but business and commercial property values remained stable.
In 2000, the split in the Ada County property tax burden was 57% residential, 43% commercial, according to figures compiled by the Ada County Assessor’s office.
Ada County Assessor Bob McQuade, a Republican who is retiring from the office after this year, has long supported indexing the homeowner’s exemption to changes in home values to address the problem. Currently, the homeowner’s exemption from property taxes is capped at $125,000. That’s only 23% of the current median assessed value, McQuade said, though Idaho’s homeowner’s exemption was long envisioned as exempting half the value of an owner-occupied home from property taxes.
“So there’s no doubt about it, that it really has lost a lot of its value in real terms,” he said. “I’ve always felt the homestead exemption being indexed is very important.”
That exemption was indexed to home values until 2016, when the Legislature removed the indexing and capped the exemption at $100,000. In 2021, the Legislature passed HB 389, which paired an array of changes including limits on local government budgets and tax breaks for businesses and developers with an increase in the maximum homeowner’s exemption from $100,000 to $125,000, but it didn’t restore indexing, just setting a new cap.
McQuade said he’s intrigued by Gannon’s idea about using a five-year average for assessments, for all types of property. “That would really add a lot of predictability for both residential and commercial,” he said. “That’s an idea I really think is worth exploring. … I’d really like to hear robust discussion around that.”
With this year an election year, there has been little work done in legislative interim committees, work groups or study committees. The only two that have publicly announced and held meetings are the Committee on Federalism, which met June 7, and the Idaho Council on Indian Affairs, which met July 6. Though House and Senate GOP leaders announced in March that they would form a working group of senators and representatives to study allegations from House Republicans that Idaho libraries are making explicit materials available to minors, that hasn’t been appointed.
Winder said he’s made appointments for four working groups, but is awaiting House appointments for those to be finalized, so none have met yet. The four are to address elections; health insurance for public school employees; how to better fund construction and capital improvements for Idaho schools; and the makeup of the Idaho Judicial Council.
The informal group discussing property taxes is not among those, Winder said. “They’re basically working on their own, and we’ll see how they get through the next month or so and then decide what we need to do, if anything,” he said.
Gannon said he’s been assured “they’re going to talk about it.”
“When there’s a serious problem, which there is, that affects the entire state – we’re seeing it in Idaho Falls, we’re seeing it in Boise, we’re seeing it in Kootenai County – legislators need to get to work and come up with some solutions and get everybody at the table, including the people who are paying the tax,” he said. “I think it’s unfortunate it’s an election year, but we’ve still got a job to do.”
A NAME CHANGE
The Idaho Federation of Families, an advocacy organization for youth and families dealing with behavioral health issues in Idaho, has long gone by that name, but it’s changing now. “We’re trying to go by the name FY Idaho – Families and Youth in Idaho,” said Executive Director Ruth York. The reason: Because the initials IFF, which the group had long used, are shared by the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
The Idaho Freedom Foundation is a right-wing lobbying and political group that advocates against funding for public education, and through its various affiliated organizations has become increasingly active in Idaho politics and campaigns. The group, which doesn’t disclose its funding sources, says on its website that its mission is “to make Idaho into a laboratory of liberty by exposing, defeating, and replacing the state’s socialist public policies.”
“I saw a headline this winter that said something outrageous that IFF has done, and my heart just stopped,” York said. “Then I realized, ‘Oh, no, it’s just them again. We’ve got to fix this!’”
The youth and family advocacy organization has now officially changed its name and is in the process of transitioning to a new logo to match.