Monday, October 09, 2006

Overdue relief: Proposition 101

Proposition 101: Local Property Tax Levies

Article IX, section 19 of the Arizona Constitution currently limits increases per year to property tax levies to 2%, but contains clauses exempting assessments levied to pay government debts, to pay for special-purpose districts, and taxes levied to support "common, high, and unified" school districts.

Billed as the "2006 Taxpayer Protection Act", this measure puzzlingly strikes the words "common, high, and unified". It also sets 2005, and not the previous year, as the base levy. In other words, it's a property-tax freeze, of the sort Bill Heuisler advocated in his unsucessful campaign for the Pima County Assessorship.

I'm leery about Prop. 101 due to the elimination of the words "common, high, and unified", given that here in AZ "school" can be taken to mean "college" or "university", at least in the context of firearms law. However, given that this prevents government from using a booming real-estate market as excuse to soak the taxpayer, I give it my support.

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