The House, on a straight party-line vote, has rejected a Democratic amendment to SB 1277 and instead approved a GOP amendment, proposed by Rep. Robert Anderst, R-Nampa, to increase the cap on the homeowner's exemption from the current $100,000 to $112,000, but to take the difference off the county in question's new construction roll, meaning the county and other taxing entities within the county would have to cut their budgets by that amount, regardless of new growth.

Several House committees will now meet immediately; the House has recessed until 3 p.m.

Anderst said, “If we had maintained an index from last year to this year, we roughly would have seen this amount of growth in the exemption.” He said, “One other thing that this amendment does that previous homeowners exemption increases has not done, is deals with this concern and issue around the shifting of the dollars that are created from the homeowner’s exemption within the budgeting of cities and counties. ... This increase will be taken out of the new construction rolls.”

“So the difference between the $100,000 current exemption and $112,000 in the new exemption would first come out of the new construction roll, and then beyond that it would come out of those city or counties’ budgets,” Anderst said.

Rep. Lauren Necochea, D-Boise, spoke against Anderst’s amendment. “We are running out of time,” she said. “We need to be sending bills to the august body across the rotunda that are workable, so that we can enact good legislation that reduces property taxes before the clock runs out. We are facing a global epidemic and a state public health emergency, which makes this amendment not only a threat to our ability to enact meaningful tax reduction before we sine die, but also a threat to public health, because it cuts resources that our counties and municipalities need in order to fight the coronavirus. This is worse in terms of the damage to the counties and the cities than what we already sent over. … You can see this $32 million hit is worse than a freeze,” she said. “And if the cost of the increased homeowner’s exemption eats up all of the county’s new construction, the cost will then start eating into the base of that county budget. This goes much deeper. This is reckless on a good day. It is downright dangerous when we’re facing a public health emergency.”

“We have to stop playing political games,” Necochea said. “This amendment is a radical change and will have radical impacts on local budgets that we don’t even understand … because we’re just seeing this now. The august body across the rotunda gave us some very clear signals this morning as to what they were willing to do on property taxes. This is not it.”

House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said, “I’m honestly kind of stunned at this amendment in light of what we’re looking at. We are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. … The counties are on the front line of dealing with this. They are the ones who run the emergency response services.”

“Just yesterday we passed $2 million to do emergency funding, and now we’re going to take 16 times more than that away from the local governments who are supposed to be overseeing that emergency response,” she said. “I’m kind of amazed that we’re having this discussion.”

Rep. Jake Ellis, D-Boise, said, “There’s gotta be a better way of providing property tax relief. This just isn’t it.”

Rep. Steve Berch, D-Boise, said, “I just can’t help but notice that here we are at 2:05 on Friday the 13th, March 13th, and we are ramming through what is the first semblance of a property tax relief bill. But somehow we had time to entertain over five anti-transgender bills. This is not the way to address the No. 1 issue.” House Speaker Scott Bedke objected, and Assistant Majority Leader Jason Monks advised Berch to stick to the amendment. “I am, I’m talking about priorities,” Berch said, decrying the lack of “critical thinking” as increasing calls of “objection” resounded around the floor. At that point the time limit for debate against the amendment had expired.

Anderst said, “When we started this session and throughout this session, property taxes has been a central point of discussion. There have been a lot of discussions around this issue. We have passed legislation and sent it across the rotunda, and it did die there. However, that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying. Property taxes are a huge issue right now, and this is an opportunity to try and find some actual property tax relief, not shift but actual property tax relief to residential primary homeowners.”

After the House recessed, Assistant Majority Leader Jason Monks said the newly amended bill won’t be taken up and debated until Monday.