The rush to cap property taxes will have disastrous consequences

The rush to cap property taxes in our state has caused me to feel a combination of anger and helpless frustration. It’s a familiar and unpleasant brew of emotions. I feel a twinge of outrage at the NCGA for taking another bite out of our progressive inheritance. And I bridle against the anger, knowing that my hostility to this legislature is truly futile. 

Limiting the growth of property taxes in North Carolina is a destructive idea, not the first to ooze out of the slimy halls of Jones Street. It will almost certainly lead to crippling cutbacks in local services. In California, the property tax limitations of Prop 13 took one of the best public schools systems in the country and drove it into a morass of failure. Local property taxes are one of the only remaining revenue streams available to North Carolina public schools. Removing them, after 15 years of destructive tax cuts at the state level, will further impoverish a public school system that may already be irreparably damaged. 

I will now make a point that will probably be quite unpopular: North Carolina does not have crippling property taxes. Even the more liberal participants in the property tax debate seem to accept the premise that North Carolina property levies are “out of control.” In fact, we have relatively low property taxes even after a wave of increases corresponding with the Biden-era rise in home values. North Carolina ranks thirty-third in property tax burden, according to the well-regarded (and conservative) Tax Foundation. We have lower property taxes than most blue states and reasonable property taxes compared to our peers. Put into comparative perspective, property taxes in North Carolina sit at a relatively reasonable median. 

Furthermore, we need to have property taxes levied at a higher rate than the bare-minimum rates to which the hard-right, parsimonious government cutters in the legislature would like to limit local governments. That’s because we are well on our way to eliminating the state income tax, and experience shows that states that provide that undeserved windfall to the billionaire class need property taxes to keep their governments solvent. Texas has no state income tax—and high property taxes. Florida has no state income tax—and high property taxes. As usual, our bull-in-a-China-shop legislature is barreling ahead toward small-government nirvana without considering the repercussions their radicalism will have. 

I am aware that nothing I say here will change the minds of North Carolina Republican legislators. They truly, fervently believe that their hardcore austerity policies have boosted North Carolina into a glorious golden age of conservative success. The property-tax amendment will likely pass with the support of every Republican legislator and perhaps a misguided Democrat or two. (Look for the embittered losers of primary challenges to take a jab at their party leadership). It will pass easily at the ballot box when voters, uninformed about the fiscal implications of the amendment, get an opportunity to give themselves a tax cut. This is the pattern, this is the profound frustration of living under a legislature of hidebound and deluded white men from Trump Country: another bout of failure, another step toward ignorant Hel