Governor Rell is again proposing that the State mandate a statewide cap on municipal property taxes.

While attractive at first blush, a property tax cap by itself does not constitute property tax relief or reform. A cap would have dire adverse consequences for towns and cities.

Further, a cap is simply not appropriate in Connecticut: local residents have ample ability to decide the sizes of their local budgets – a state-imposed cap would be the ultimate “nanny-state” act; it would tell local taxpayers that the State knows better than they how much their town should tax and spend.

There is no question that the property tax is too high in too many of our communities. It’s inherently unfair and regressive. It’s a tax from yesterday that is no longer up to doing all of the jobs it’s being asked to do today. But an artificial, state-mandated cap would make things worse.

Property tax caps take various forms, for instance they can limit (a) property tax rates, (b) property assessments, or (c) growth in local revenue. While many states have property tax caps, there is a wide variety of ways in which they are applied, for example in Maine the cap can be exceeded by a simple majority vote of a municipal legislative body.

This Public Policy Report examines the impacts a property tax cap could have on our state – and why it’s wrong for Connecticut.

This document is in .PDF format. A free Adobe Acrobat viewer is available from Adobe here.