Last November I wrote a letter to the editor in the Morning Call encouraging folks to vote “YES” on a statewide referendum to reform property taxes through the state’s homestead exclusion program. That vote passed by a large margin, clearly demonstrating Pennsylvanians desire for reducing the property tax burden. Our state has among the highest in the Nation.

Problem is the vote alone which amended the state constitution does nothing in and of itself.  The State Legislature also needed to pass enabling legislation to allow local governments to further reduce property taxes on primary residences. To date, they have failed to do that.

The majority on our Lower Mac board of Commissioners stood ready to further reduce residential property taxes had the State legislature respected the wishes of Pennsylvanians and acted on enabling legislation. We assumed this would happen. It didn’t.
Note: We already utilize homestead to the maximum percentage currently allowed. Because of this, 1,100 of our lowest income households pay no property tax.

Our township budget and finance committee which I serve on has been discussing a strategy to further reduce residential property taxes for the last few months. We stood ready to take action in hopes that the legislature did their job. They didn’t and that’s incredibly disappointing since they had a clear mandate to do so directly from voters.

As I stated in the LTE last year, “If the referendum and corresponding legislation is passed, Lower Macungie will be able to eliminate the entire residential property tax for every qualifying residential household.” That was our intent and we were ready to act.

We just needed Harrisburg politicians to get out of our way. Sadly, they can’t even get out of their own way.