- Times Leader
First Posted:
WILKES-BARRE TWP. — Charles Urban held up a newspaper to bemoan the hundreds of foreclosure listings during a property owners association meeting last week.
“Six and a half pages of people losing their homes,” Urban said, shaking the paper.
A meeting that usually packs the township community room with 40 or 50 people was uncharacteristically short on attendants one day after state senators in Harrisburg shut down a bill that promised to bring tax relief for Pennsylvania property owners.
At the head table, Urban, president of Luzerne County Property Owners, and his colleague, Frank Sorick, president of the Wilkes-Barre Taxpayers Association, urged the six in the room to stay optimistic.
“Once people are beaten ... they’re done,” Sorick said glumly. “They’re not going to put up a fight anymore.”
Senate Bill 76, or school property tax reform, gained more traction this year than ever before having cleared the Senate Finance Committee and was well on its way to the Senate floor.
On the last day of the session, the bill died one vote shy in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It must be reintroduced next session as a new bill.
Democrats and Republicans sponsored the bill. But there is opposition to reform mostly from the Democratic side of the aisle and even Republicans who support eliminating school property taxes say the bill had some serious flaws.
Sorick and Urban also recognize the flaws, but argue lawmakers have been trying to eliminate property taxes for decades, and the now defunct proposal would have left property owners and the state’s economy better off than before.
And it can always be amended, Urban said.
Armed with a 2013 analysis by Anderson Economic Group, a Chicago research firm, the downed taxpayers still believe raising sales and income taxes will hold up the state’s 500 school districts, as well as create a reserve fund for dry times.
In fact, the Anderson report projects in a few years, the reserve fund will be fat with nearly $2 billion.
Without reforming taxes, the research shows school districts in general must increase property taxes by about 4 percent annually for at least the next five years.
David Baldinger is a citizen activist from Berks County near Reading who created the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition. He said it’s a positive sign that such a bill made it so far in the Senate because it shares bipartisan support and was created with heavy citizen input.
“This is not a bill concocted in Harrisburg. What it comes down to is this is the people’s bill,” Baldinger said. “That’s something that you never see in Harrisburg.”
At the end of their meeting, the coalition leaders urged members to focus on the election.
“Where do we go from here?” Urban said. “The next thing we need to do is get those naysayers out.”
At the heart of the matter, no homeowner should fear losing their home to the government, Urban said. “Because right now you pay 30 years on that home and you still don’t own it; you’re only renting from the government.”
