Legislators deny tax resolutions a hearing

Published: March 5, 2008
Kingman Daily Miner Staff Writer

Suzanne Adams

Property tax reformers across the state had their hopes slightly crushed last week when two Senate resolutions that would have rewritten secondary property tax laws were denied a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee.

Two Mohave County legislators, Sen. Ron Gould and Rep. Trish Groe, sponsored the resolutions. Arizona Tax Revolt, an organization that has worked for the last two years to reduce and limit property tax in Arizona, was also a sponsor.

The two Senate resolutions would have amended the state constitution to reduce, limit and control secondary property taxes. Secondary property taxes are those charged by fire districts, school districts and taxing entities other than the state, county or city.

Arizona Tax Revolt Chairman Marc Goldstone said he was very disappointed and felt that the committee had bowed to pressure from secondary taxing districts.

Gould confirmed that Senate Finance Chairman Jim Warring refused to hear the resolutions, effectively killing the resolutions for this legislative session.

The resolutions could be added as an amendment to another bill in the Senate, Gould said. But that would be highly unlikely due to the length of the resolutions. The only way to get the property tax reforms though now is by voter initiative, he said.

Arizona Tax Revolt has been collecting signatures since early last year to put the two resolutions on the November ballot.

"Hopefully, this will light a fire under the volunteers collecting signatures," Gould said. "We've got to work 110 percent."

Gould said he wants to see some sort of property tax reform. There are currently two groups, Arizona Tax Revolt and Prop13 AZ, that are fighting to get constitutional amendments on November's ballot.

"I think it's egregious that some people have seen a 300-percent increase in their taxes," he said.

"We're back to circulating petitions," Goldstone said. "If people would like to see property tax reform, then it's time to get to work."

Goldstone declined to say how many signatures the group has already collected.

The group will need to collect more than 230,000 valid signatures before July 3 for each of its two initiatives in order to place them on November's ballot.

For more information on Arizona Tax Revolt, go to www.arizonataxrevolt.org