Where’s our relief from property tax?

Pennsylvania homeowners, get ready. This year’s school property tax bill is about to hit your mailbox. And, once again, it most likely includes yet another increase in your property tax — compliments of our Republican-run General Assembly’s failure to adequately fund our schools or provide for meaningful property tax relief.

As if record inflation isn’t enough to drain our wallets, school districts throughout Pennsylvania have, once again, been forced to raise the inequitable property tax because that’s the only option they have when confronted with their own inflationary pressures and a slew of unfunded and underfunded state mandates.

In my home school district of East Pennsboro, because they were told by Republican legislative leaders not to count on any education funding increase as proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf, school directors have adopted a 2022-23 school budget that includes a 4.2% tax increase — the district’s ninth in the past 10 years. The situation is similar in districts throughout Pennsylvania.

The level of state funding support for our school district has shrunk to a dismal 28%, with the remaining funding coming from the pockets of local property owners. No wonder our state ranks in the bottom 10 states in terms of state support for our schools.

To our state lawmakers, looking to finalize the next budget while sitting on a record state reserve and revenue surplus of some $12 billion, I would ask — on behalf of overburdened school property tax-weary homeowners everywhere — where’s our homeowner property tax relief?

It’s been five years since voters approved a GOP-sponsored constitutional amendment to expand the homestead exemption to allow for the elimination of homeowner property taxes. The amendment authorized school districts, counties and municipalities to exempt up to 100% of the assessed value of each homestead property.

But it appears the will of the people here has been forgotten. Lawmakers, to date, have failed to provide local taxing bodies with the funding or funding mechanism to even begin to implement this change.

Here’s a novel idea. Instead of more election-year political pandering with unrealistic $14 billion “tax shift” school property tax elimination proposals aimed primarily at giving large commercial and corporate property owners a windfall tax break, how about using a portion of the state’s burgeoning revenue surplus to give homeowners some inflation relief by beginning to implement the provisions of the constitutional change ?

For decades, the inequitable property tax — which has no bearing on a homeowner’s ability to pay — has been blamed for driving people, especially our fixed-income senior citizens, out of their homes while making it more difficult for young families to afford a home. It’s long past time for substantive relief. Using state dollars to lower homeowner school property taxes would have the side benefit of boosting the state’s abysmal share of funding for our schools.

It’s also long past time for the state to fund its fair share of mandates such as cyber charter schools. It is ridiculous that districts are required to pay the full cost of students attending non-district cyber charter schools while many other states provide the funding for that alternative. This has become a $3 million drain on East Pennsboro’s schools.

Finally, I think it’s important to note the GOP movement to shift more and more funding to “school choice” alternatives and away from our local public schools. It would have a disastrous effect on the schools attended by the vast majority of children.

I would remind our state lawmakers of another unmet constitutional obligation. The Pennsylvania Constitution states: “The General Assembly shall” — not may — “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public” — not private — “education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.”

Our state and federal constitutions have many provisions, not just a few. And I would respectfully suggest that our state and federal lawmakers keep in mind that the oath they took is to uphold and defend all of the provisions, not just some of them.

Jim Hertzler is a retired Cumberland County commissioner and a former executive assistant to the late Sen. Michael A. O’Pake.