Latest news with #SenateBill542
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Property tax relief package clears Montana Legislature
The Montana state capitol pictured after a late-night Senate vote on Jan. 9, 2025. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan) The final priority for the 69th Montana Legislature — one many lawmakers campaigned on — passed both chambers on the final day of the session. Property tax relief for residential payers has been top of mind for legislators following historic increases in property values during the last few years, with more anticipated this year, according to Department of Revenue estimates. According to one representative, lawmakers debated at least 47 different bills related to property taxes this session. On Wednesday, the House took the final votes on a major property tax bills — House Bill 231 — passing it on a bipartisan basis with 69 representatives voting 'aye.' The Senate on Tuesday passed HB 231, and a coordinated bill, Senate Bill 542, 28-22 and 29-21, respectively, with one Democrat opposing both bills and the GOP split. Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, sponsored HB 231 and was largely seen as the architect behind both bills' final forms, as well as the state budget, working closely with the governor's office and coalitions of lawmakers to push the massive pieces of legislation through. 'I came here to have residential, owner dwellings get a tax cut. This bill, in conjunction with 542, does that.' Llew on the floor, adding that he anticipated around 30,000 to 40,000 small businesses would also get a cut. But many hard-line Republicans, especially in the Senate, decried the property tax bills as complicated and burdensome, and the Legislature still had time to come up with a better plan. 'It's unfair. It's complicated. It's expensive to implement,' said Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray of the two bills. 'I'm all for providing property tax relief for residential taxpayers, but not with this bill. As I've said, this bill's unconstitutional, it's violated our rules,' Sen. Greg Hertz echoed. 'There's better ways to do this, and we can. I'm fine if you just kill this thing and Senate Bill 542, and come back in a special session. We need to get it right, and we're not getting this right.' A major sticking point for many detractors was that the bills don't reduce overall property tax collection in the state, but merely shift the burden between different types of properties, an outcome supporters said is only realistic. The relief package contains a homestead exemption — championed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, that taxes second homes at a higher rate than owner-occupied homes. To prioritize residential homeowners, other shifts would result in higher taxes for some large businesses and utilities, and the bills were heavily opposed by the Montana Chamber of Commerce and energy and utility companies. But Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, said the outrage at the shift in taxes was hypocritical. He said that before the 2023 session, lawmakers received a memo from the Department of Revenue warning them that residential property taxes would increase if they didn't take action. 'We did nothing. There was a tax shift,' Flowers said. 'In some cases — in my case — my taxes doubled in Gallatin County. Doubled. Where was the outrage on that shift? So there's outrage now, because apparently the oil refinery is going to pay slightly higher taxes. But what about the shift that occurred in 2023 when our residents saw their taxes jack up? Where was the outrage?' '…(Our constituents) didn't ask us to maintain exactly the same taxes on oil refineries.' In the House, Jones echoed the same sentiment, asking where the'scream of anguish' had been when taxes shifted towards residential payers. Jones said that when residential properties saw tax spikes upwards of 40%, centrally-assessed properties, like refineries and utilities, saw tens of millions of dollars of decrease. Meanwhile, the average reduction for a median home value in Montana — $360,000 according to DOR revenue Jones cited — would see a $719 decrease in taxes from the previous year. 'I think that's significant,' Jones said. After the new bills are implemented, those types of properties, and business properties, will still be lower than they were four years ago, Jones said. The two final property tax bills saw many changes during the last weeks of the session, including last-minute amendments made to HB 231 on Tuesday morning. Jones described the final changes as necessary to coordinate the two bills and ease implementation for the Department of Revenue, preventing delays in seeing results for homeowners. Another change also attempts to address an issue with city charters — namely in Sunburst and Billings — that have fixed mills and could potentially see large increases in property taxes. The latter issue united many lawmakers from the Billings area — including one Democrat — against the bills, saying they're 'bad bills' for the Yellowstone County area. But overwhelmingly in both chambers the consensus was that Montanans sent lawmakers to Helena to address high property taxes, with these bills as the best option. 'It's not a perfect product. I would posit there is no such thing as a perfect product, because the essence of the property tax relief is that somewhere, somehow, there are going to be tax shifts,' Rep. Dave Bedey, R-Hamilton, said in the House. Bedey added that the disagreements and fingerpointing between various factions of lawmakers — including a Senate coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans who joined together on major pieces of legislation — prevented the Legislature from delivering property tax bills earlier on in the session, as requested by the governor. 'Yeah, the cake might have been baked. It should have been baked. We should have had it out the oven earlier,' Bedey said. 'And now we're doing the best we can.' In the upper chamber, Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, said legislators could go home and be proud of the work they accomplished on property taxes this session. An estimated 230,000 to 240,000 homeowners will be impacted by the tax cuts, according to Jones. '(Those) homeowners will be helped, their rates will go down, their taxes will go down,' Dunwell said. 'And you can tell your constituents that will happen.'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Senate pushes $250M bill for new women's prison, $6M bill for closed sawmills
The Montana Women's Prison in BIllings (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan). The tension about property taxes is filtering into debates about other bills including a proposal to spend $250 million on a new women's prison and another bill to allocate $6 million for sawmill revitalization. Both proposals, however, advanced this week. House Bill 833 would set aside money for a new prison, and in an interview Wednesday, sponsor and Rep. John Fitzpatrick, R-Anaconda, said the women's prison in Billings is well over capacity. It houses 240 people, but he said Montana needs beds for at least 400, possibly 500. 'Unlike the men, we have no place to put them out of state,' he said, referring to a contract with CoreCivic that sends male inmates to prisons in Arizona and Mississippi. Fitzpatrick said the bill includes a study the Department of Corrections will lead to determine a new location for a women's prison — not excluding Billings or Deer Lodge, where the men's prison is located, but not favoring them either, he said. 'It could be anywhere,' Fitzpatrick said. He anticipates that study should be complete by the end of the calendar year, and a groundbreaking could take place in roughly a year. He said the current women's prison likely would be eventually repurposed by the state. On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. John Esp, R-Big Timber, said the female population with the Department of Corrections has been rising faster than the male population, and just one 'relatively small' facility houses women in the state. 'There's no option to contract with others for this population,' Esp said. Esp said the waiting list for the women's prison in Billings has about 85 people, and the facility is probably eight to 10 people over capacity. 'And they don't turn over very fast,' Esp said. The bill would allow the state to build a new facility, or a private contractor to do so and sell or lease it back to the state, Esp said. Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, said he acknowledged the problem, but he had a hard time spending so much money with property taxes yet to be resolved. 'We're going to spend $250 million on prisons before we figure out what we're going to do with property taxes,' said Trebas, who voted against the bill. On a final 46-4 vote Wednesday, the Senate approved HB 833, including with support from all Billings legislators. The bill earlier passed the House 86-12, also with support from Billings legislators. It is included in the governor's budget. Later the same day, the Senate also advanced a major property tax bill, House Bill 231, and the House advanced another one, Senate Bill 542, but both proposals still need to clear multiple votes to pass. The Senate also approved House Bill 876, the Sawmill Revitalization Act, sponsored by Rep. Fitzpatrick and Rep. Connie Keogh, D-Missoula. It passed 29-21 on Wednesday, and also raised questions about property tax bills. The bill sets aside $6 million for loans with interest rates of a maximum 4% 'to parties with the capacity to revitalize a closed sawmill and return it to commercial operation.' Originally, the bill had given priority to sawmills that had closed in the 12 months before Jan. 1, 2025. In March 2024, Pyramid Mountain Lumber announced it would close its Seeley Lake mill. In the Senate Finance and Claims Committee, however, Esp proposed an amendment to strike that limitation, and the committee approved it. On the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, said in the 1970s, Montana had more than 50 operating mills, and it now has just five major ones. In the last three years, mills closed in St. Regis and Seeley Lake, and Cuffe said the closures represent 'major lost economic activity.' Sen. Becky Beard, however, said the mill in Seeley Lake is pretty much dismantled, and it would take at least $40 million to get it up and running again, not just $6 million. 'There is not really anything left there except the shells of the buildings where the machinery was housed,' said Beard, R-Elliston, who voted against it. Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, said Montana has the lumber for the Seeley Lake mill, but it needs staffing, and the bill would help. 'We have people ready to come and do the work in Montana to get these facilities up and running. I think that's a great thing for us,' Morigeau said. Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, said the state sells roughly 60 million board feet of lumber a year, and the mill is located close to state trust land timber. He said every mile needed to move a log to a sawmill makes the lumber worth less to the state. 'This mill is located in a strategic location for the taxpayers of the state of Montana,' Curdy said. But Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, said the $6 million shouldn't be spent that way. Regier said he supports the industry and remembers seeing homemade signs in the Flathead in the 1990s that said, 'This Family Supported by the Timber Industry.' At the time, however, he said that industry supported itself. 'We're spending taxpayer dollars to do what loggers did in the '90s,' Regier said. Sen. Barry Usher, R-Billings, said even as the Senate tried to help a sawmill, it was contemplating a bill that would hurt commercial businesses. He pointed to HB 231, which aims to support residential property taxpayers, but passes on increases to other groups, including commercial property taxpayers, he said. Usher said he was told many people were lined up to try to help revitalize the sawmill at Seeley Lake, and he had a question: 'Were they advised in advance that if House Bill 231 passes, that their commercial property taxes are going up?'
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Major property tax proposals advance, legislators raise concerns with both
Photo illustration by Getty Images. With a maximum 11 days left in the session, legislators advanced two major but conflicting property tax relief proposals on Tuesday, one in the House and one in the Senate. Within minutes of each other, House Bill 231 passed in the Senate, and Senate Bill 542 passed in the House. Speaker of the House Brandon Ler, R-Savage, said many options have been flying around the Capitol, and SB 542 melds together ideas from other bills into one that isn't perfect, but needs to pass. 'We want to get something across for our constituents, and we want to be able to say that this legislature at least took a stab at lowering property taxes,' Ler said.'Is this bill going to do everything … that everybody in this room wants it to do? No. Does it do everything I wanted to do? No. But what it does do is it actually makes a difference in property taxes.' SB 542 includes a tiered rate drop and a one-time rebate among other provisions. Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, said she had concerns about the bill, but it's 'past time' to do something for residential property taxpayers, more than just a rebate. 'People will notice this,' Sullivan said. 'Our constituents will open their bill, and they will say thank you. You guys dropped some rates for us.' HB 231 is a 43-page property tax bill so complicated Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvary quipped on Tuesday that 'nobody really knows what this bill is doing besides three, or four, or five us in the room.' The bill has gone through months of amendments, including two more added on the floor Tuesday that addressed an issue with taxation limits in the Billings and Sunburst city charters that has complicated property tax discussions. House Bill 231 looks to shift property taxes onto second homes, but has met resistance from some legislators who live in districts with large numbers of second homes and short-term rentals. Both bills still need a final vote in their respective chambers, and as both have been heavily amended, they will need to get another approval from their original chamber to pass. How legislators choose to push either or both forward to the governor's desk will unfold in the last days of the session. Reducing property taxes for residential payers has been a priority for the 2025 Montana Legislature because bills have increased significantly — more than 20% on average in the state in the most recent 2023 reappraisal, and are expected to increase again. Ler said SB 542 takes pieces from other bills, including a major proposal from Democrats, House Bill 155, and marries them into 'what the media now calls 'the Frankenstein property tax bill.'' It also takes pieces from HB 231, a proposal supported by the Governor's Office,. Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, said residential property tax bills will decrease 14.5% statewide in the first year, and those payers also will receive a one-time $400 rebate. Also in the first year, Jones said commercial properties will rise 4.6%, centrally assessed properties, such as railroads, will increase 10.7%, and agriculture will be up 4.3%. In year two, he said, bills for residential homes would be down 25.6% on average. After killing all but one amendment in a debate that ran nearly an hour-and-a-half, the House approved the bill on a bipartisan 80-20 vote. The only amendment that passed was proposed by Rep. Katie Zolnikov, R-Billings. Legislators have said the bill could cost the city of Billings millions because of an apparent conflict with its charter, which caps mills levied without voter approval. Zolnikov said if the city of Billings gets in legal trouble as a result, the amendment requires the state to pay any legal fees. 'I don't think anybody's intent is to, you know, bankrupt the city of Billings,' Zolnikov said. Ler said the bill already protected the city of Billings and its unique situation, but the amendment was friendly. It passed with 99 votes and none opposed. After the House passed the bill, though, a fierce debate followed over whether to send it to the Appropriations Committee, which reviews significant spending proposals. Some legislators argued the House shouldn't take shortcuts, especially because lawmakers didn't have a current analysis of the bill's cost. Rep. Zooey Zephyr, D-Missoula, said legislators need to work quickly, but they need to complete all their work too. 'This is the process. We shouldn't skirt the process just because we waited until day 79 to pass property taxes,' Zephyr said. Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, said it was a weighty piece of legislation, and he wanted to know who the losers were before he voted. He said he didn't believe all of them had been identified, nor did he want to vote on legislation without a current fiscal analysis. 'I am not wild about voting on this without a new fiscal note,' said Mercer, who voted no on the bill. However, Jones, chairperson of the Appropriations Committee, said the committee already had seen the bills that are part of SB 542, so the committee had a good handle on cost, and time was of the essence. 'I want to make sure that a tax bill crosses into the Senate before the Senate goes home,' Jones said. The House agreed to bypass the review in the Appropriations Committee. HB 231 'picks winners and losers,' Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, said on the floor Tuesday. HB 231 includes a property tax rebate on taxes paid in 2024. Someone who applied for the rebate also automatically qualifies for the homestead exemption built into the bill, a major piece of policy the governor has pushed. The bill passed on a narrow 26-24 vote, with a single Democrat in opposition and nine Republicans in support. Glimm's comments echoed the sentiments expressed by Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, and Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell. Hertz, Glimm and Reiger have all been in support of Senate Bill 90, which directs tourist dollars toward property tax rebates as part of their property tax solution. But they didn't support HB 231. In the final comment before bill carrier Sen. Dave Fern, D-Whitefish, closed on HB 231, Regier explained his reason — first to the legislature, and then to the people of Montana. He noted to the legislature it was spending general fund money, which has been a common discussion point in the chamber. And then, saying he was speaking directly to the public, he said tax rates, especially for agricultural communities, were going to go up if House Bill 231 passed. For second home properties and short term rentals, that increase could be over $300 million, according to a fiscal note for HB 231. 'There are a lot of options that actually do provide property tax relief,' Regier said. 'This is not it. So please, watch this vote, and hold those that vote for and against accountable.' Fern, though, said the bill would provide middle-class property tax relief, saying that 'for most folks, it will be a substantial tax decrease.' He also pushed back on the idea second homes were a major issue, saying that when he knocked on doors during his campaign, 'I'm going to guess 98% of them didn't have second homes.' However, Fern added HB 542 may end up being the vehicle for property tax relief and pointed to the urgency. 'Over the last couple sessions, we, the legislature and the Governor's Office failed to deliver property taxes, and so it compounded,' Fern said on the floor. 'Then we had a very volatile situation where appraisals and values went high. The system was not built to mitigate it in an easy way.'
