The St. Marys senior citizen exemption debate.

Well, I learned something new in the T&G article on this today. Frankly, I thought the reporter may have gotten it wrong so I e-mailed Councilwoman Hase for clarification.

He had it right. Here's the language I questioned.

The homestead exemption,
which was approved in 1991
by a referendum, is a tax deduction
of $25,000 off property
assessments for residents
who are 65 and older, but senior
citizens cannot qualify for
the exemption if their annual
income is $25,000 more than
their retirement, pension or
social security benefits.

While he is playing a little fast and loose with his usage of  "tax deduction" (it is actually an exemption of $25,000 of the assessed value of your home from taxation at the city's millage rate), that is not the part I had wrong. I thought that so long as your total income from all sources was no more than $25,000, you qualified. WRONG.  It turns out that if you are a retired corporate executive drawing a pension of $100,000, Social Security of $25,000, and investment earnings of $50,000, so long as you do not have current income from active employment in excess of $25,000, you still qualify. Councilwoman Hase confirms that this is the case.

Now, it turns out that neither Kingsland nor Woodbine have any active income restrictions on their over 65 exemptions. Hase, who is up for election next year and counts among her constituents and supporters many who are over 65 and earning more than $25,000, is pushing to have State Senator Jeff Chapman go along with State Rep. Cecily Hill in pushing that through the state legislature.

Hill is all for it but Chapman has balked. He has countered with a plan which would raise both the amount seniors could earn and still get the exemption and the amount of the exemption itself from their current matching levels of $25,000 to matching levels of  $40,000.

Now, it turns out that the city council extant prior to last year's election voted unanimously for this.
However this year, Councilman Sidney Howell, whose natural supporters tend to be retired union mill workers and not retired corporate executives and who, for the most part, do not make over $40,000 in earned income when they hit 65 and are notoriously class envious, as is Sidney, is against the move to remove any means testing whatsoever for the exemption. Senator Chapman has been so advised by Councilman Howell and now cites that as proof that there is not widespread support of the move to drop any income restriction.

Councilman Howell is, of course, not up for re-election next year, but it is widely believed that his wife Rindy, the director of the St. Marys Senior Center and a former (and perhaps current?) local political liason of Senator Chapman, will be running this year to unseat State Representative Hill. Hill and Chapman are not big buds.

Chapman's ostensible real objection is the lost revenues. Councilwoman Hase tells me that their stats show that eliminating the means test altogether would cost the city of St. Marys approximately $75,000 annually at the current millage rate. She counters that we would not be at a disadvantage when retiring seniors looking to move here inquire about the tax situations in the three cities.

So, what do you folks think about this?