By Guy Page
Gov. Phil Scott today signed into law S.160, abating State education property taxes and flood-related damage.
The new law reimburse a municipality for certain State education property tax payments if the municipality granted State education property tax abatements to property owners for damage caused by flooding. This bill also proposes to exclude federal disaster relief payments from household income when calculating the homestead property tax credit.
The bill was introduced in January by Sen. Ann Cummings (D-Washington) and co-sponsored by Sens. Philip Baruth, Christopher Bray, Thomas Chittenden, Brian Collamore, Ruth Hardy, Wendy Harrison, M. Jane Kitchel, Virginia Lyons, Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Anne Watson, Richard Westman, and Rebecca White.
The Joint Fiscal Office estimates this bill will cost $ 1.1 million to the Education Fund in fiscal year 2024. Absent any other changes in policy, the statewide homestead property yield and/or statewide nonhomestead property tax rate will need to be adjusted to account for the anticipated cost of reimbursements.
Washington County, Cummings’ home county, was particularly hard-hit during the July floods. Many properties in Montpelier, Berlin, Waterbury and Montpelier were destroyed, including most of the homes in several mobile home parks. Mobile home owners, in particular, sought and received municipal property tax abatements from their local boards of adjustment. S.160 in practice passes along the duty to pay the lost tax revenue from the municipal property taxpayers to all Vermont property taxpayers.