Testifying on HB 1774
Today I journeyed down to Olympia along with fellow allies David Goldstein and Steve Zemke to testify before the state House Finance Committee in favor of HB 1774 - an act relating to property tax relief, which many of you know as simply the homestead exemption.
One highlight was that I got a chance to observe the state House in session. During my few minutes in the gallery, I listened to the House debate and then pass HB 1194 on prescription drugs. A few Republicans spoke against it, but in the end, the bill passed, with the Democratic caucus in favor and the Republican caucus opposed.
Then it was off to the John O'Brien Building for committee hearings. There were six bills ahead of ours, but there were only people testifying in favor of them, and so we got to ours - HB 1774 - fairly quickly.
Representative Santos, who is the prime sponsor of HB 1774 and also a member of the Finance committee, spoke first and talked about the need for the Homestead Exemption. Then I testified, mostly from a statement I had prepared myself, which you can read here. Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington's Future came up with me to testify, and he followed with his own remarks.
We were followed by some opponents to HB 1774 - first, the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound, who claimed the bill would have a negative impact on renters and the cost of renting an apartment or home - and a representative from the Washington Appartment Association, who made the same argument.
Then came Tom McBride from the Association of Washington Business (which, by the way, also endorsed I-892 last autumn) with the traditional "this will hurt business and so therefore we oppose it" argument, even though the homestead exemption has very little effect on businesses.
In fact, the tax burden has been shifting from commerical properties onto residential properties - apparently the business association would prefer to keep it that way, at the expense of homeowners.
The state realtors association and the Building Owners and Managers association also sent people to oppose our proposal. Most of the associations' arguments were lousy and phony, but that didn't stop their representatives from making them. They are afraid of change that doesn't substantially benefit them.
Our own David Goldstein, author of HorsesAss.org, spoke in between these people and helped shoot down some of the myths and erroneous assumptions being made about the proposal. While we certainly do have concern about the impact on renters (more data is needed to assess the impact before any conclusions can really be drawn) the rest of the arguments against the homestead exemption were pretty lame.
The hearing is now over, but this proposal is still on the table. We clearly need more data to figure out how the homestead exemption will affect Washington State, and we need to learn more about the impact on renters.
And we certainly need to have a discussion about this issue. As I pointed out in my testimony to the committee, affordable home ownership is becoming a serious problem.
Not giving testimony, but signed in to support our proposal were Dave Wood of People for Fair Taxes, and Carrie Little of the Emergency Food Network.
We'll continue adding information to Permanent Defense's Homestead Exemption Center, and we're definitely going to keep talking about it. So keep following the discussion. It's far from over.
One highlight was that I got a chance to observe the state House in session. During my few minutes in the gallery, I listened to the House debate and then pass HB 1194 on prescription drugs. A few Republicans spoke against it, but in the end, the bill passed, with the Democratic caucus in favor and the Republican caucus opposed.
Then it was off to the John O'Brien Building for committee hearings. There were six bills ahead of ours, but there were only people testifying in favor of them, and so we got to ours - HB 1774 - fairly quickly.
Representative Santos, who is the prime sponsor of HB 1774 and also a member of the Finance committee, spoke first and talked about the need for the Homestead Exemption. Then I testified, mostly from a statement I had prepared myself, which you can read here. Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington's Future came up with me to testify, and he followed with his own remarks.
We were followed by some opponents to HB 1774 - first, the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound, who claimed the bill would have a negative impact on renters and the cost of renting an apartment or home - and a representative from the Washington Appartment Association, who made the same argument.
Then came Tom McBride from the Association of Washington Business (which, by the way, also endorsed I-892 last autumn) with the traditional "this will hurt business and so therefore we oppose it" argument, even though the homestead exemption has very little effect on businesses.
In fact, the tax burden has been shifting from commerical properties onto residential properties - apparently the business association would prefer to keep it that way, at the expense of homeowners.
The state realtors association and the Building Owners and Managers association also sent people to oppose our proposal. Most of the associations' arguments were lousy and phony, but that didn't stop their representatives from making them. They are afraid of change that doesn't substantially benefit them.
Our own David Goldstein, author of HorsesAss.org, spoke in between these people and helped shoot down some of the myths and erroneous assumptions being made about the proposal. While we certainly do have concern about the impact on renters (more data is needed to assess the impact before any conclusions can really be drawn) the rest of the arguments against the homestead exemption were pretty lame.
The hearing is now over, but this proposal is still on the table. We clearly need more data to figure out how the homestead exemption will affect Washington State, and we need to learn more about the impact on renters.
And we certainly need to have a discussion about this issue. As I pointed out in my testimony to the committee, affordable home ownership is becoming a serious problem.
Not giving testimony, but signed in to support our proposal were Dave Wood of People for Fair Taxes, and Carrie Little of the Emergency Food Network.
We'll continue adding information to Permanent Defense's Homestead Exemption Center, and we're definitely going to keep talking about it. So keep following the discussion. It's far from over.
