Free Republic

Black residents of Chicago should receive reparations in the form of no property taxes, a local activist group says. The group wants city leaders and Cook County to stop imposing the taxes on those residents who are allegedly being displaced from their homes, Fox 32 reported Monday. Reconstruction Era Reparation Act Now (ReRaN) Founder Howard Ray said, “People lost their homes because of property taxes. Because everybody’s been overcharged.” “So what we want to do especially for the Black community because we’re very fragile, we want to keep them and preserve them here and by doing that, we can hold...

The latest Census Bureau data on population changes in America should have been a wake-up call to lawmakers in blue states and cities. The Census data provide even further evidence that “soak the rich” tax policies have incited a blue-state meltdown. California, New York, and Illinois all lost the most population last year. These states have nearly lost a combined 5 million people over the past decade. California and New York could both lose another three congressional seats by the end of the decade, and Illinois another two. Did I mention that these are the three states with the highest...

Soaring home insurance premiums in Florida are putting residents under unbearable financial pressure, with many telling Newsweek that they are considering leaving the state or moving somewhere cheaper within Florida. The state has currently the most expensive home insurance premiums in the country, according to a recent report by the Insurance Information Institute. Residents are currently paying on average more than $4,200 per year compared to the national average of $1,700, according to data from Triple I. While this is due in part to the increased risk of devastating weather events like hurricanes, other factors—including an excess of litigation and...

A typo resulting in a multimillion dollar property value assessment error is expected to affect multiple taxing districts in Kootenai County and delay the distribution of property tax notices. County elected officials convened Thursday for a special meeting to address an overvalued lakefront property in the Rockford Bay Area. An assessor valuation amendment signed Oct. 24 by commissioners and Chief Deputy Assessor Ben Crotinger indicates the front footage of the parcel, was mistakenly entered by an appraiser as 6,966 feet instead of 69.66 feet. The error caused the property’s valuation to jump from $1.4 million in 2022 to $54.3 million...

In addition to the off-year elections to be decided this November in Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi, a number of ballot initiatives will be voted on in other states. Perhaps the most consequential measure appearing on the November 2023 ballot, at least when it comes to fiscal policy, is found in Colorado, where voters will be asked whether they want to weaken the nation’s strongest tax and expenditure limit in exchange for property tax relief. Proposition HH, which was referred to the November ballot by Colorado lawmakers with the support of Governor Jared Polis (D), would weaken the state’s Taxpayer’s...

Legislative Democrats have been scheming to kill Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, since before it was added to the state Constitution in 1992. Hardly a year goes by without a bill, proposal, “listening tour,” or lawsuit hatched to enable state legislators to spend money TABOR denies them. Now, they’re at it again. This time, they’ve proposed a Rube-Goldberg ballot initiative called Proposition HH. Some of its superficial details might seem novel — like lipstick on the proverbial pig — but it’s only the latest gambit in a political long-con that has gotten very, very old. That’s why the...

In the modern rental market, some apartments and other types of homes for rent have requirements from their owners dictating the level of a tenant's income. Typically, these require tenants to make three times their monthly rent in income to qualify, with some requiring up to four times the rent to ensure tenants will pay each month. Over the past few years, rental rates have increased dramatically across the U.S., with a 16% increase observed nationally from 2021 to 2022, according to NerdWallet. While that growth has reportedly slowed, rents remain higher than they have historically. A TikToker questioned the...

Property-tax relief? Hardly. Proposition HH on this fall’s statewide ballot is really about growing government. And it attempts to do that by piggybacking on public outrage over skyrocketing property tax bills. The proposal’s purported property-tax “relief” — served up by Gov. Jared Polis and his legislative allies as one part of their dizzyingly complicated scheme — is a ruse. As with every attempt to play politics with a crisis, there’s a hidden agenda. And that agenda is to snooker Colorado voters into letting the state keep and spend billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue that otherwise would have to...

Like a lot of Coloradans, residents of Costilla County balked at the changes to their property values because of what it means for their property taxes. Higher values, higher taxes. The county assessor is in charge of determining that value, but the values that people are getting back don't make much sense to them right now. Whether you are Joe C. Rodriguez who has lived in southern Colorado for 79 years, or Tom Philips who moved out there in 2021 for his retirement home, it's the same problem across the board. They both got increased values out of what they...

We’ll say it again now that Gov. Jared Polis has inked his purported “relief” for soaring property taxes: His plan is largely an illusion. Ignore the stagecraft of Wednesday’s signing ceremony for Senate Bill 23-303. It was a nice publicity stunt — the governor and assorted lawmakers turning up at the home of a Commerce City resident who supposedly would benefit. It was all sleight of hand. As we noted here only weeks ago, the Polis plan is as if someone offered to help you pay your bills — then reached into your pocket, grabbed your wallet, pulled out some...

The court issued two opinions this morning that may be of interest to Freepers. The first, issued by Justice Barrett was: Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 21-454 [Arg: 10.3.2022 Trans.; Decided 5.25.2023] Holding: The Clean Water Act extends only to wetlands that have a continuous surface connection with “waters” of the United States — i.e., with a relatively permanent body of water connected to traditional interstate navigable waters, 33 U.S.C. § 1362(7) — making it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetland begins. The second, by Justice Roberts was: Tyler v. Hennepin County, Minnesota, No. 22-166...

The devil is in the details behind all the weekend media headlines proclaiming equal TABOR refunds, but only if voters approve Prop HH that is disguised as a property tax cut. It’s a con job that would make Charles Ponzi proud. The last hour bill comes as the legislative session grinds to a close today. It came with zero review or input from the public and most of your elected lawmakers. The bill — sponsored by Democratic Reps. Chris deGruy Kennedy and Mike Weissman, as well as Democratic Sens. Chris Hansen and Nick Hinrichsen — was immediately heard Saturday afternoon...

Suppose someone offers to help you pay your bills — then reaches into your pocket, grabs your wallet, pulls out some money and hands it to you. That’s more or less what Gov. Jared Polis and his Democratic allies who run the Legislature have in mind in promising “relief” for Coloradans facing skyrocketing property taxes. Unveiled by the governor at a Monday news conference and introduced the same day in the Legislature as Senate Bill 23-303, the complicated proposal would ask voters on next November’s statewide ballot to pay for a large part of their own property-tax relief. That’s right;...

If you’ve opened your property tax assessment you’ve already had your coronary. Your property value has gone up between 30% and 70%.. That means because the Legislature, under Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter, froze mill levy rates (preventing them from lowering) and because voters foolishly repealed the Gallagher Amendment in 2020, your property taxes are going to go up some 30% to 70% next year. But don’t worry. The same people who have put you in this bind are going to pantomime rescuing you just as the clock runs out on their legislative session. What heroes. The Colorado state Legislature, with...

It was a dream come true—or rather about to come true—when the Halls bought their forever home. It had everything they needed and more: five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a family room, a dining room, a roomy garage, good schools, and a good neighborhood. Sure, a fixer-upper, but they felt up to it. Prentiss Hall, a home improvement contractor, made it his life project, and everybody lent a hand—his wife, Tawanda, and six children, cousins, and friends. “We were really excited,” Tawanda told The Epoch Times. They negotiated the price down to $67,000—a bargain, perhaps, but the home demanded a daunting...

Homeowners across Colorado are bracing themselves for a hefty increase in their property tax bills. This is the year county assessors re-value homes and properties. On Wednesday, those assessors warned homeowners that the values are increasing from 30% to more than 60% in some counties. ... "The fact is that there is no reprieve for homeowners this year. From corner to corner of Douglas County and probably the state, all values have gone up quite significantly. If it's rural, if it's suburban, if it's large, if it's small, if it's expensive or inexpensive, all properties in Douglas County in the...

With less than a month left of the legislative session, Gov. Polis has yet to put forth any plan to prevent a looming bloodbath and cap residential property tax increases as he promised when voters repealed the Gallagher amendment. Republicans put forth their own plan to cap expected spikes of 40-50% to just five or ten percent over the next several years. But Democrats were ordered to kill those efforts and await the arrival of their hero governor, who would surely swoop in and save the day just in time for his planned 2024 presidential run. Yet the clock is...

School leaders in rural northwest Oregon are worried about big budget cuts. The Oregon Department of Forestry is working on a plan to protect habitats for endangered species across 640,000 acres of state forest. The loss of timber revenue will affect local schools. The Jewell School District expects to be the most heavily impacted because it gets almost all of its funding from timber revenue. It could see budget cuts of 40 percent. The Jewell School District has about 150 students and a budget of $5 million. District superintendent Cory Pederson estimates the cuts will bring his annual budget down...

Gov. Polis ran for reelection on promises of saving people money and state lawmakers claim one of their top priorities this session is finding ways to make housing more affordable. And yet they’re about to push homeowners and renters off a financial cliff when an enormous property tax bill of 26.5% comes due next year. Lawmakers could have done something to stop it, and there’s still time. But they’re too busy banning gun discharges on private property and legalizing drug injection sites to enable addicts. Michael Fields, president of the Advance Colorado Institute, writes in the Denver Post this week...

From the hardscrabble hills of western Pennsylvania to the hardknock blocks of Northeast Philadelphia, children are getting inferior educations in underfunded school districts with low property values and incomes. Crowded classrooms in the state’s 100 most poorly funded districts deny children, who may enter kindergarten a year behind their more affluent peers, the attention they need. Those districts, including South Allegheny, East Allegheny, New Castle, Sharon and Philadelphia, educate one-third of the state’s 1.5 million students, two-thirds of its Black students, and nearly 60% of its poor students. Leaky roofs, obsolete and unsafe buildings, and broken laptops plague many of...