Championing property tax relief again

Greetings!
There is a property tax meeting this Thursday, July 17, at 9 a.m. at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Beck ballroom. The intent is to come up with draft legislation to present before the entire legislative body when session starts in January 2026. 
In my humble opinion, we District 30 legislators have been the most proactive about trying to accomplish property tax relief. However, neither Sen. Hulse, Rep. Ladner nor myself were selected to be on this committee. There are 105 legislators, so getting selected is a tough task, but I still think that at least one of us should be on the committee. It’s not a huge deal as we still can attend and give testimony.
I plan on testifying on the property tax bill I ended up prime sponsoring (HB1019). Initially Rep. Tony VenHuizen was the prime sponsor of this bill. As you will remember, Gov. Noem resigned her governorship to be the Secretary of Homeland Defense and Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden was automatically, by state law, moved up to be our governor. This created the lieutenant governor vacancy, which Rep. VenHuizen was selected to fill.
I like to tease Tony by saying that some people will do anything to get out of pitching a bill (meaning that’s the reason he wanted to be the lieutenant governor).
You can look up HB1019 entitled “Eliminate certain property taxes levied on owner occupied single dwelling and to increase certain gross receipts tax notes and use tax rates,” at sdlegislature.com.
Man, what a bunch of bureaucratic garble! What the bill does is raise the state sales tax from 4.2 cents to 5¢. For every percent of state sales tax the state generates $300 million. In this case eight-tenths of a percent would generate roughly $280 million.
These dollars would be earmarked by codified law to go to only owner occupied homes. This results in $417 tax relief for every $100,000 of county tax assessment. So, if your home is assessed at $500,000 like my trailer house is, that would be 417x5=$2,085 in relief from county property taxes. The beauty of this bill is it is paid for up front out of the eighth-tenths sales tax increase.
By the way, North Dakota sales tax is 5 percent, so we’d be the same as North Dakota with this increase.
The county, the school systems within that county, nor the city governments are touched. Why? Because it is paid up front.
A noteworthy myth that needs to be put to rest:
Back in about 1989, when the video lottery was passed, that money was supposed to go to the schools and none of it did! We were lied to about video lottery funds. The truth of the matter is that there was no stipulation in the bill that earmarked video lottery funds to anywhere other than our state treasury.
The state of South Dakota had or has no choice but to put video lottery funds into the general funds. How much money is that? It is 50 percent of the take at a video lottery establishment. The owner gets 50 percent and the state gets 50 percent. That generates about $320 million per year, so the take would be $160 million to the state and $160 million to the video lottery casinos.
The beauty, again, of HB1019 is it is specified in the bill, and if passed becomes law, stipulates where that $280 million is dispersed. Make sense? Well, it didn’t to the members of the House of Representatives as it was defeated 35 yeas, 34 nays, 1 absent. Because of the tax increase, it needed 47 yeas to pass.
Here is the good news: there were about 19 property tax bills last session, so it was hard to keep up with each one. This year I plan on submitting HB1019 before session starts so it is on the docket day one of session.
I think that with more education and understanding, it has a good chance of getting through the House and over to the Senate for passage and then down to Gov. Rhoden for his signature. Now, is that a hooah hooah?