The Kansas Legislature early Friday morning passed a bill delaying property tax payments and requiring more public disclosure when local governments collect extra tax dollars from rising property values.
The bill – passed 89-28 in the House and 35-2 in the Senate – would delay payment of property taxes to Aug. 10, 2020 without interest or penalties. Property taxes were due May 10.
Another part of the bill is intended to prevent home repairs from driving up property values.
The bill also would authorize county treasurers to establish payment plans for nondelinquent taxes. Treasurers are now only allowed to accept partial payments for delinquent property taxes.
The bill now goes to the governor.
The most controversial part of the bill, however, would require local governments to hold hearings and vote to accept extra revenues coming from increased property values even if the property tax rate remained steady.
Under the legislation, the property tax rate for local governments would be adjusted to bring in the same amount of revenue as it did the year before. A vote and hearing would be required to take in more money.
The bill requires local governments seeking to collect more revenue to send notices to taxpayers providing them with information that includes the revenue needed to fund their budgets, the proposed percentage change in the tax rate and the appraised and assessed property values.
The bill attracted opposition from local governments, which protested that the law would make it harder for them to count new construction values coming on to the books.
The bill does not include school districts. It also removes the much-criticized property tax lid, which generally requires voters to approve city and county property tax increases higher than inflation from the previous year.
Local governments had criticized the legislation, suggesting the Legislature is hypocritical because it doesn’t apply the same new disclosure standards to the state’s 21.5-mill tax levy for schools and general government operations.
Democratic state Rep. Jim Gartner opposed the legislation and tried unsuccessfully to get the bill returned to committee.
He said he didn’t think the bill had been thoroughly examined
He called for delaying the start date of the so-called transparency component to 2022 from the current date of January 2021.
“Right now during the pandemic, counties and munis are going to be hurting for money,” Gartner said. “Let’s not burden them with a new program to put into place.”
Gartner said he thinks a lot of the information that the bill requires local governments to provide taxpayers is already available on his property tax statement.
“Talk about transparency, if people are looking at their tax bill, it’s already right there in front of them,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of transparency today that goes on.”
Republican state Rep. Dave Baker also urged lawmakers to send the bill back to committee and kill it for the 2020 session.
“Property taxes are a bad deal,” he said. “They are not fair. We have tried things over the years to make them fair. We have not succeeded at all. This bill is another attempt at that. It has some good things in it. But we need more time to work those kinks out.
“We need to hold off on this bill. Get some more input and do a little more analysis.”
The bill does not contain a measure passed earlier in the day on Thursday that would freeze property taxes for Kansans 65 years and older as well as veterans with at least a 50 percent permanent disability rating.
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