Why Should Delaware Care?
A recent property reassessment reset the balance in tax burden between residential and commercial property in New Castle County, where the majority of Delaware’s residents and commercial industry resides. Critiques of that process prompted lawmakers to reconvene and pass reforms. But that proceeding also highlighted a long simmering divide between factions within the legislature.
Tuesday’s rare special legislative session squeezed what could typically be weeks worth of proceedings in Dover into a single day.
It also appeared to unleash months of pent-up frustrations among factions of lawmakers. It was particularly evident within the Delaware House of Representatives where various members lobbed accusations of political theatrics, even while the chamber pushed through legislation designed to respond to public outrage over a recently completed, once-in-40-year property tax reassessment.
In the end, the House and Senate passed six bills and one resolution, most of which were quickly signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer late Tuesday night.
The most contentious and, arguably, most impactful of the passed legislation were two House bills that lawmakers debated for hours into the late evening.
They included House Bill 241, which allows tax delinquent homeowners to go onto payment plans and remove the threat of sheriff’s sale; and House Bill 242, which allows school districts in New Castle County to charge higher property tax rates on commercially owned land in order to subsequently lower the rates on residential properties.
Democratic lawmakers particularly pointed to House Bill 242 as a “stop-gap measure” that they said could ease the pinch on homeowners in northern Delaware, where residential property taxes surged this year, following a property reassessment.
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For some homes, tax bills more than doubled following the reassessment, driven almost entirely by the portion of taxes that fund local schools. As a result of the increases, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have said their email inboxes and voice messages have been flooded by furious homeowners – some of whom are seniors on fixed incomes who are afraid they will lose their houses.
When urging her colleagues to support House Bill 242, House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown pointed to those tax spikes, saying they had placed an unfair financial burden onto homeowners that once was paid by businesses.
“This last reassessment has resulted in significant, significant financial strains,” she said, pointing particularly to New Castle County.
County data indicates that before the reassessment, residential properties made up about 66% of the county’s tax burden. Afterward, they represented 76%.
Political theater or political creativity?
While House Bill 242 itself was broadly supported by lawmakers, Republicans and progressive Democrats derided the process through which it emerged on Tuesday, saying there were few avenues for their pieces of legislation to be heard.
Republicans also criticized Democratic leadership for holding a one-day special session without committee hearings that could allow testimony from the public.
“I’m disappointed we’re not following the process in regard to public comment, committee meetings, and a chance for the public to be heard,” Rep. Lyndon Yearick (R-Dover South) said.
Also criticizing the process was House Minority Whip Jeffrey Spiegelman (R-Clayton) who at one point faced off with Minor-Brown over legislative rules governing when lawmakers can make comments on the House floor.
Spiegelman’s protest prompted a rebuke from Minor-Brown.
“You’re out of order, Representative Spiegelman,” she said. “And you know it.”
House leaders also faced criticisms from the left wing of their own Democratic party, with leading progressive Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear) calling out House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris for a social media post she had made the previous day about “some” lawmakers who she said did not work collaboratively during the leadup to the special session.
In a separate image included on the same post, Harris also said Delaware needs “solutions that work, not political theater.”
While Harris did not name members in her statement, it was a clear reference to Wilson-Anton and her progressive allies, who had held a press conference about their own package of property tax bills on Friday.
When those bills weren’t included on the House agenda for Tuesday, Wilson-Anton instead introduced a string of amendments to the bills that were supported by leadership.
In comments on the House floor. Wilson-Anton defended the move, as one that may be seen as political theater, but that she believes is an “act of political creativity.”
“I asked our brilliant staff to take the policies from those bills and craft them as amendments,” she said on the House floor.
In her comments, Wilson-Anton also asserted that she – and her Republican colleagues – had been “disenfranchised” from the process in the days before the special session, leaving her with little information about bills that her own party was writing.
“I didn’t see any of the bills that are in front of us today on the agenda until they were circulated to all members less than 24 hours before they were in the pre-file,” she said.
Following the criticisms, Harris responded with an impassioned defense of her own. She said Wilson-Anton had not been sidelined, instead arguing that any lawmaker will get support from leadership on bills if they collaborate.
“No, Representative Wilson-Anton, we are not trying to push you to the side,” Harris said.
Harris also said House leadership does not have the ability to force the consideration of any bill, because lawmakers can overrule leadership’s decisions with a majority vote.
Meyer asked to testify
What lawmakers did not pass Tuesday was a Republican bill that would slash a school district’s ability to automatically increase property tax revenues by 10% following a reassessment. It would have been retroactive to July 1, putting the Appoquinimink and Christina school districts particularly in the crosshairs.
That bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Smith (R-Newark), failed because the House voted against bringing to the floor for consideration.
Smith previously declared that opposing his bill would amount to “political malpractice” for his Democratic colleagues.
Smith also proposed a separate measure during the hearing that similarly didn’t succeed but nevertheless sparked a moment of levity, and potentially togetherness among the members.
After hours of bruising debates, the Newark Republican said it was clear to him that Meyer is a “stakeholder” in the conversation, because the governor previously served as the New Castle County executive who oversaw the legal settlement that precipitated the reassessment and the selection of the company, Tyler Technologies, that completed it.
He then asked Minor-Brown if the House could call Meyer to testify before them.
Several members chuckled at the suggestion, and Minor-Brown said, “If there’s no objection and the governor’s staff can go find the governor, he is welcome to come to the House floor.”
Later, the governor’s communication director appeared in the doorway of the House chamber, but Meyer did not.
Earlier in the day, Meyer had been in Philadelphia at an event celebrating an upcoming football game between Delaware State University and Norfolk State University. Today, each team is coached by a former Philadelphia Eagles stars.
While Smith’s call eased tensions in the House, Senate leaders dismissed the move.
Asked about the suggestion, Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark) said, “We were not focusing on the theatrics, but on the solutions,”
He said their focus remained on passing targeted measures to address inequities created by the property tax reassessment, while leaving broader reforms for later discussions when lawmakers return in January.
For their part, Senate leadership on Tuesday quickly passed three bills of their own and one resolution – though none as consequential as the two in the House.
Those Senate bills included a measure that requires New Castle County to submit quarterly reports about its property tax collections, and two that clarify that counties and municipal governments have the ability to tax different classifications of properties – such as residential or commercial real estate – at different rates.
The bill requiring quarterly reports from New Castle County, Senate Bill 202, was the only piece of legislation from the special session that Meyer did not immediately sign into law Tuesday. It’s unclear whether he intends to sign it.
