At the urging of state Commerce Director Jeff Sayer, the House Revenue & Taxation Committee has agreed to introduce new legislation allowing counties to greatly expand their use of an optional property tax break they can hand out for business expansions. Currently, the tax break is only for new manufacturing plants that involve investment of $3 million or more. The new bill would make that $500,000 for counties with less than 30,000 population; and $2 million for those with 30,000 population or more. It would also drop the requirement that the new investment be for a manufacturing plant; the tax break could be given out for  any “non-retail commercial or industrial project.” Sayer said, “That allows a little more flexibility in how county commissioners apply this.”

Sayer said he worked with counties, cities, urban renewal districts and others on the bill, which also includes a requirement that when a county receives an application for a property tax abatement under the bill, that it notify cities and other taxing districts that would be affected within three business days, and not later than five days before the county commissioners make the decision to grant the tax break.

House Majority Mike Moyle, R-Star, objected to that. “I don’t like that provision - I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. “Remember this is a new project. It’s not anticipated in any of those overlaying taxing districts. … It’s something that was unanticipated, that comes in as extra. I don’t think you need to notify ‘em, because it doesn’t affect ‘em if the project goes forward.”

Moyle also objected to having different thresholds for small and large counties. “Why don’t we go for $1 million for everybody?” he asked. Sayer said, “There’s lot of work that goes into this, getting multiple parties on board. ... The counties were pretty insistent that they wanted to have a larger threshold on larger counties.” The committee agreed to introduce the bill as-is; Sayer said when it gets its full committee hearing, he’ll bring people in to talk about how the existing tax break has worked and why it should be expanded.