Commissioners weigh in on Gray-promoted State legislation
At the December 15 County Commissioners Work Session, NewsLanc asked the Commissioners for their take on House Bill 1682, a piece of legislation that would allow counties in Pennsylvania to impose a 1% sales tax to be split between the county and its municipalities for countywide property tax relief and a fresh stream of municipal revenue. Mayor Rick Gray has lately been working to rally other Pennsylvania mayors to a call for the passage of this bill—or at least something like it.
According to the parameters of HB 1682, if passed, approval from the Commissioners would be crucial to its implementation in Lancaster County. The Commissioners, though not opposed to the notion of property tax relief, expressed skepticism as to whether this bill would ultimately pass in any desirable form.
“In my understanding,” Commissioner Scott Martin said, “That bill was drastically changed from what [the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania] had originally supported…The bill got extremely diluted. So I think some of the major organizations have withdrawn their support of that bill.”
Martin specified that one weakness in HB1682 is that “only 60% of it was mandated for property tax reduction. That 40% would have been automatically new spending. That did rub a lot of people the wrong way.” He speculated that, most likely, the coming year will bring some alternative legislation. “I look at [HB 1682] as a band-aid,” Martin said, “People want to see real property tax reform.”
Commissioner Craig Lehman, an outspoken advocate for such reforms, said that “the bill, as it was introduced, I would argue, is the first real attempt at local tax reform at the county level.” Lehman also asserted that the property tax is not a “sustainable” source of revenue for local government, be it counties, school districts, or municipalities.
According to Lehman, HB 1682 was introduced at a very politically inopportune time: “I don’t know that the best time for something like this to succeed is when the economy is in the process of tanking. But in terms of the overall issue of local tax reform, I still maintain that it is one of the most important issues that we need to grapple with.”
The State legislature should require that all government facilities (County, State, and Federal) located within the boundaries of any city in Pennsylvania be taxed by the city government at their full assessed real estate value. This would include the court house, the County office buildings, the prison, the Youth Intervention Center, and the convention center.
For far too long, the government of Lancaster County has been using the infrastructure and resources of Lancaster City without paying for its fair share of the cost; this leaves City taxpayers stuck with subsidizing the rest of Lancaster County.