State Representative Again Proposes Ending Property Taxes

By John L. Micek | Pennsylvania Capital-Star

If State Rep. Frank Ryan’s name is synonymous with one thing, it’s his years-long effort to eliminate Pennsylvania’s school property tax.

Advocates have come close over the years — notably in 2015 — but they never have been able to muster the votes to get a reform bill through the House and Senate and onto the governor’s desk.

The biggest obstacle to passage always has been finding the money to replace the tens of billions of dollars in revenue that the property tax currently provides to Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts.

Ryan, a Republican from Lebanon County, a former U.S. Marine and a CPA, has had his fingerprints on many of those efforts.

And that includes a reform bill that’s been sitting in the House Finance Committee since February that relies on increased sales and income taxes, as well as a tax on retirement income, to replace lost property tax revenue.

But Ryan will call it a career at year’s end. And on his way out the door, he’s decided to give the voters a chance to do what he and his colleagues have not: Eliminate property taxes once and for all.

On Monday, Ryan began seeking co-sponsors for a proposed constitutional amendment whose language “embodies the spirit” of the bill now before the House committee. And should the amendment be approved, Ryan recommended using his current bill as a template for the eventual enabling legislation, hewrote in a memo to his colleagues.

“It’s time to get rid of property taxes and this constitutional amendment allows the voters to decide upon the replacement tax. That has been the shortcoming in the prior effort,” Ryan wrote in his co-sponsorship memo.

Echoing an argument he’s made for years, Ryan pointed out that the tax “disproportionately impacts middle and lower-income residents.”

Shifting to a “sales/income tax” model in his bill “eliminates the regressive school property tax and will serve to eliminate barriers to home ownership,” he wrote.

“The bill will also ensure an improved fair funding formula for each school district and to allow a transition period from the archaic system to a modern school funding model,” he continued.

Once it’s formally introduced, Ryan’s proposal will join a thicket of GOP-backed ballot initiatives, including one, now subject to a state Supreme Court challenge, that would amend the state’s foundational document to declare that there’s no constitutional right to abortion or to public funding for the procedure.

Proposed constitutional amendments must be passed in identical form in consecutive legislative sessions, be publicly advertised, and then approved by the voters in a statewide referendum. There’s no role for the executive branch in the process.

“The time is now to save the Commonwealth from financial bankruptcy and its residents from homelessness,” Ryan wrote in his cosponsorship memo. “The property tax is effectively an asset tax on homes, which for many people is their largest asset.”