The Governor’s initiatives are intriguing, and her goals of property tax relief and school accountability are shared by municipal officials and others across the state.

The notion of a cap on property taxes is interesting and deserves serious consideration. The experience in other states where property tax limits have been imposed raise a number of questions:

A one-size-fits-all property tax cap:

• May not be sensitive to the diverse public service needs of all the communities in our state;
• Will hold municipalities and property taxpayers even more hostage to the vagaries of state aid, and the past shows us too often that state aid commitments have been made and then broken; and
• Has often been accompanied by significant mandates reform, involving both the prohibition of future unfunded mandates, and relief from current onerous unfunded mandates.

CCM continues to analyze the Governor’s just-released proposal.

RELATED STORY: Governor Rell issues clarion call for property tax relief, classroom accountability