A last-minute attempt to approve a constitutional amendment capping property value increases came up short in the House late Friday night.
The amendment failed on a 59-63 vote, well short of the 84 votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment in the House. The Senate had already adjourned until April 9.
The House used a procedural maneuver to keep the legislation alive to allow for more discussion between now and when the Legislature adjourns for the year in early April.
Lawmakers will have to find a way to work out some kind of deal between now and when they return to Topeka on April 9 for a veto session.
House-Senate negotiators agreed Friday morning on a constitutional amendment that would have capped assessed values at 9% or less compared to the assessed value for property in 2024.
The language would have allowed the Legislature to lower that cap, causing angst among some lawmakers worried that the 9% cap would be somewhat of a mirage and end up being lower.
The proposal would have gone on the ballot this Aug. 4. It would have started in 2027.
The compromise plan considered by the House was very different from the idea it first presented to the Senate this week.
The House offered a plan that would have capped appraised values based on a six-year rolling average or a 7.5% increase, or whichever was less. It would have started in 2028.
The House plan contained no look-back like the Senate plan, which would have based a cap on property values relative to 2022 levels.
Republican state Rep. Adam Smith of Weskan, chair of the House tax committee, said he had been gauging support with the Republican caucus for a cap ranging from 3% to 10%.
“I was just trying to find out where most of the members would be,” Smith said.
“We’re trying to get 84 votes on this. It’s a constitutional amendment, and that 7.5% is where we thought we had the numbers,” Smith said.
Republican state Steve Brunk of Wichita voted against the amendment. He opposed the idea of writing a 9% cap into the state constitution.
“When you put things into the constitution, you have to be absolutely sure that it’s correct,” Brunk said after the House adjourned Friday morning.
“This one started off with a 9% cap on it,” he said. “People are asking us for property tax relief. Nine percent increases into the constitution are not relief. It was way too high.”
Brunk said capping property values with a rolling average was not necessarily an answer either.
“A rolling average doesn’t give property tax relief,” he said.
“The rolling average stops those kinds of unpredictable spikes,” he said “It gives you some stability and predictability.”
“That doesn’t give property tax relief. It gives you stability,” he said.
Republican state Rep. Will Carpenter of El Dorado also voted against the amendment Friday night.
“It’s so disappointing for me,” said Carpenter, who will not seek reelection this year.
“Every year, we find ourselves here with literally a gun to our head at midnight passing a tax plan,” Carpenter said.
“It’s just disappointing that we’re here at the last hour voting on a bill that I think was trash.”
Carpenter preferred keeping the rolling average in the bill.
“Nobody understands what 9% is or anything like that. You can understand the rolling average a lot better,” Carpenter said.
“We had a whole week to negotiate a tax bill, and here we are at midnight voting on a tax bill.
“It should have been done Monday or Tuesday when we had time to really review it and deal with what we needed to do to fix the thing,” he said.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins, who is serving out his last session as a legislator, publicly addressed what he described as a “tough week” that ended with his chamber being accused of not negotiating a tax bill in good faith.
“We thought we knew where this week was going to go,” Hawkins told the House.
“It didn’t work out that way very well. The last two days have been very difficult basically for the conference committee,” he said.
“A lot of things have been said. It’s been said that the House doesn’t negotiate in good faith,” Hawkins said. “That is absolutely not true. Our tax people have negotiated in great faith.”
