Impasse looms on school property taxes

Group of lawmakers likely to come up with list of options for party leaders

A bipartisan group of Pennsylvania lawmakers deliberating the future of the school property tax appears headed for an impasse on whether to reduce or end it, and likely will pass along a list of options to House and Senate party leaders to pursue.

The informal group, led by Republican state Sen. David Argall of Schuylkill County, has met repeatedly in the past two months to try to chart a course on the future of the tax, which is perceived as overly burdensome.

Wednesday morning, Argall

said one meeting remained and that the goal was to present House and Senate party leaders — who appointed the approximately 15 members of the group — with multiple options for pursuing legislation.

The concept, Argall said, was to “let them take those options back to the caucuses and get some vote counts.”

His statement came after Rep. Peter Schweyer, a Lehigh County Democrat and a member of the group, said in an interview that the group appeared to be split into two camps.

One, Schweyer said, wants to eliminate the property tax completely, and the other wants to take what Schweyer described as “more realistic” measures that would reduce reliance on the tax or mitigate the perceived unfairness, without completely eliminating it.

“I do not believe at the end of this we are going to achieve consensus on what the goal is,” Schweyer said Tuesday, adding that he respected the effort and leadership of the panel.

In a separate interview, state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, who chairs the House Insurance Committee and has his own idea about reducing the tax load on senior citizens, said Tuesday, “They are not going to be able to eliminate it.”

The group was handpicked about two months ago by leaders of both parties in the House and Senate. Meeting informally, their hope was to chart a course toward legislation that would completely eliminate or at least reduce school property taxes by shifting the revenue-raising burden to other taxes.

The tax levied by school districts around the state raises about $15 billion a year, an amount that grows each time a school board votes to increases a district tax levy.

Lawmakers have tried for decades to adjust or eliminate it.

Several members of the informal group of lawmakers, including Argall, said they had hoped to produce a plan that would get 102 votes in the House, 26 in the Senate and the signature of Gov. Tom Wolf.

Argall said the working group’s concept and approach were unprecedented, in that both parties and both chambers of the General Assembly were involved in informal meetings also attended by a staffer from the governor’s office.

Some options to be presented to House and Senate floor leaders will include approaches to give tax relief to senior citizens who are homeowners, to homeowners in general, or to property owners in general, Argall said.

“We still have some considerable work ahead of us, a lot of details being reviewed, a lot of competing plans. But so far, I am pleased by the bipartisan nature of the work group,” Argall said. “I think the four caucuses are working well together. The governor’s office has been represented every meeting.”

DeLuca, an Allegheny County Democrat who has been in the House for 36 years, said he would push his own concept for relieving senior citizens of the burden of school property taxes.

DeLuca said he planned a bill that would effectively “freeze” those taxes on senior citizens and compensate for the lost revenue through a new tax placed on advertising done by pharmaceutical companies. The advertising tax, he said, would raise about $135 million.