• Pushes for passage of the constitutional amendment in November

Recently Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon spoke with SVI Media as part of the Weekday Wakeup radio show and detailed his decisions for the recent property tax bills he signed that passed the Wyoming Legislature. He also spoke to the one bill that was passed by the legislature that he vetoed and his reasoning for that decision.

“In my State of the State adderess, I spoke on property taxes as one of the biggest issues that Wyoming has to deal with,” Gordon said. “What happens is people move here and buy property. Lincoln County in particular has seen the incredible rise in assessed valuation because people really want to live here. House Bill 3 says that if you’re 65 or older and have paid property tax for 25 years in Wyoming, you get an exemption of 50% of the property value. For those long term residents in places like Star Valley, who through no fault of their own, have seen their property tax go up so substantially, for those people who are living on a fixed income, this gave them that exemption of 50%. That was a huge lift and a very valuable bill.”

Gordon also touted the property tax refund program.

“We also extended the property tax refund that has been pretty valuable,” he continued. “Brackets were added in. The old bill that people could take advantage of, we added a 165% bracket, the legislature didn’t give me enough money so we took that out with a line-item veto. But if you’re 145% of the median household income in Lincoln County which is $134,000 per year, if you’re up to that amount you can get a property tax rebate. That seemed very valuable to meet the needs of people there.”

The governor also touched on the details of House Bill 45 and the importance of voters to pass the constitutional amendment later this year which would allow the legislature to have more options.

“This made sure that we wouldn’t see the 10-25 percent increase of evaluations,” he continued. “This was capped at 4 percent now. I really want to let people know that the one thing coming up this fall on the ballot is a constitutional amendment which will allow the legislature to set property tax differently for home owners than it does for all other productions. In our constitution it takes into account an assessment required for industrial and mining purposes. Another element is real and personal [category]. That’s the catch-all that we find ourselves in. If we pass this amendment it will allow us to create a new sub-class which will allow us to use what House Bill 54 would have brought.”

While the governor passed four property tax bills, many residents were frustrated with Gordon for the one that he vetoed. He reasoned that the bill itself would have only been effective for two years rather than creating a permanent solution.

“The constitutional amendment would help us to make this permanent,” he said. “Otherwise it would have been two years. That tax goes to the county. I don’t like taxes. I particularly don’t like my taxes to go and pay somebody else’s. This [bill] would have taken more of the local tax there. That’s why I think it’s so important to pass that constitutional amendment. It will help us keep our taxes low permanently and it is constitutionally appropriate. That’s the real reason I pushed it. I understand people want checks coming in the mail but I didn’t feel it was the right way to go about it. It wasn’t permanent. People would have been shocked in a couple of years to see that expire. We need something permanent.”

The legislative bodies dealt with a large number of bills despite being the budget, or shorter, session which occurs every other year. Gordon appreciated the work that the elected officials put into process.

“I want to congratulate the legislature, they fought hard,” he concluded. “It was a little different than I’ve seen before. It was a little harder to get the budget across the line this time. For me I was a little disappointed that we ended up having to do things that were routine and pull that capital construction into it. We want bills that are clean. I’ve been a stickler on that in the past. I tried to stick to that as much as I could this year. All in all I thought the session was relatively successful. We’re a conservative state but I wanted to make sure we were in line with our constitution.