Dan Dawson. (IA Legislature photo.)
Republicans in the House and Senate have yet to agree on a property tax reduction plan as the 2023 Iowa legislature enters its 13th week.
Senator Dan Dawson, a Republican from Council, is chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He’s sponsored three different bills on the subject.
“I believe something will get done this session…While we have different bills, we hit the same topics,” Dawson said this weekend on Iowa Press on Iowa PBS. “The House is looking at debt, how cities put stuff on debt and we’re looking at assessments. We know that assessments are going to be an issue this year.”
Assessments are naturally going up because the sale prices of homes and farmland has gone up over the past few years, but lawmakers are discussing ways to limit how much city and county property tax collections may grow annually.
“There’s nothing wrong with an assessment going up, it’s when that assessment results in higher property taxes,” Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver told Radio Iowa, “and so looking at that formula and the rollbacks and just making sure that cities are taxing only what they need to.”
One of Dawson’s proposals would consolidate most local government operations under one general property tax levy, getting rid of special levies. Dawson cited the example of civic center levies, which he says were built long ago and the ongoing operation of those facilities should be part of the general city or county budget.
“That’s just one example of how we’ve siloed out all these operations, and we need people to be responsible for their overall budget in the end,” Dawson said, “and that’s the value, I think, of our proposal of consolidating these levies and giving locals more responsibility and more accountability in how they budget.”
Senator Pam Jochum of Dubuque is the top Democrat on the senate’s tax policy committee. Jochum said she’s optimistic Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on a property tax reduction plan.
“I would hope we can figure out how we can unravel a very complex tax system, because the property tax system is probably the most complicated of all the tax systems we have in Iowa, and really get our arms around how it works and making sure we aren’t shifting the tax burden onto somebody else,” Jochum said on Iowa PBS.
House Republicans have introduced a bill that would lower the property tax levy for state school funding and have the state cover a larger share of local public school budgets. It also would require schools to use cash reserves or other sources to come up with 10% of a construction project’s cost before asking voters to approve a borrowing money for the project. House Speaker Pat Grassley has acknowledged House and Senate Republicans are not close to agreeing on a common approach to property tax adjustments.