New property tax proposal picks up steam in Legislature

Kirsten Searer

Friday, March 25, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, stood on the Assembly floor Thursday night and pinched her fingers close together.

"We are so close that I feel good," she said with a big smile.

After weeks of plodding toward a plan to curb property taxes in the state, leaders said a new deal is gaining momentum in the Assembly and Senate.

The plan, released this morning, would give all homeowners a hardship exemption, capping their tax increases at 3 percent a year.

Commercial properties would see less of a break, but would have their property taxes capped at either twice the consumer price index or at the county's average property tax increase over 10 years. Commercial properties will be taxed on whichever is greater.

Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, called the plan a "hybrid of a hybrid" of the ideas that have been floating around the Legislature over the past months.

"We're getting close to what I think is a good compromise," said McGinness, the chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee. "We're in the same ballpark."

Details still could change, but Buckley said the initial numbers "strike the right balance."

The plan was released in a joint Assembly-Senate committee meeting today.

Buckley said the plan has the support of all 42 members of the Assembly and said she hoped to introduce the bill today in an emergency session of the Assembly Growth and Infrastructure Committee.

The Assembly could pass the bill as early as today, she said.

But some senators said people on their side of the building are more wary of the idea and want the weekend to mull over numbers analyzing the plan.

"If it is introduced tomorrow (Friday) and run through the Assembly, I suspect it will lose some of the consensus it would get if we thought about it over the weekend," Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said.

Beers said the 10-year average could hurt rural counties that have seen property values dip into negative percentages.

"It's possible a 10-year average would result in a negative number," Beers said. "A business' taxes might go down 15 percent."

Rural counties that have seen some growth because of increases in mining want to capture it, he said.

A 10-year average still could result in property increases of more than 12 percent in Clark County, Beers said. But he did point out that is much less than the 20 or 30 percent increase commercial properties might see without property tax relief.

If those problems can be fixed, more senators will likely be on board, Beers said.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said staff members have been chugging through numbers analyzing several different plans, but it takes time to figure out how each plan would affect every tax district in the state.

One idea that had been floating around would cap government revenues and then simulate a tax rate for property owners. But Perkins said staff members had difficulties applying that idea.

Legislators will see numbers on other major plans that have floated, including a straight cap on assessed values and a freeze on assessed values this year, with a cap set next year at the rate of inflation.