[MarignyBywater] Sign petition to increase Homestead Exemption

[Drunah Drunah]

I'm not sure how many of you have signed this, but with the insurance
increases faced by property owners this year, especially with Fair Plan
doing a 7% increase, everything continues to go up. I encourage all of
you that live in Louisiana to sign this. 

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/lahomeex/petition.html


Thousands sign petition asking for homestead exemption to be raised
by Ed Anderson, The Times-Picayune
Thursday January 22, 2009, 9:00 AM

BATON
ROUGE -- Almost 22,000 Louisiana residents have signed an electronic
petition launched last month to urge lawmakers to increase the
homestead exemption, the author of the petition said Wednesday.

Joshua
Kahler, who is affiliated with a New Orleans real estate firm, said
about 2,000 people a day are going online to sign their names, urging
legislators to increase the tax-exempt portion of a home from $75,000
to at least $160,000.

Under existing law, a homeowner is not
taxed on the first $75,000 of a home's value but must pay property
taxes on 10 percent of the assessed value of the property over that
level, based on various millages for local governmental bodies.

Kahler
said as the national recession deepens and individuals are having to
dig deeper to pay property taxes, the first $170,000 of a home's value
should be exempt from taxes.

As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the petition -- at www.PetitionOnline.com/lahomeex/petition.html -- had 21,836 electronic signatures.

Kahler
said he hopes to get 100,000 names on the petition by the time the
annual legislative session opens April 27 at noon. He said he launched
the petition drive during "Christmas week as a glorified letter" to the
Legislature and hoped to gather 10,000 names by the time the session
started.

In less than a month, he said, he doubled his original projections and feels 100,000 signatures is "totally achievable."

State
law does not allow citizens to put issues on the ballot for a vote, but
Kahler said he wants to gather enough names as a show of sentiment by a
large segment of the population.

The petition states that the
"benefits of the homestead exemption and the need to increase it for
inflation have never been more important. Homeowner taxes continue to
increase as property values increase while the amount of the exemption
remains fixed" and unchanged from the $75,000 level since 1980. "If
adjusted for inflation alone, the homestead exemption today would be
more than $160,000, according to the petition.

The petition
states that lower tax rates make home ownership more affordable and
make the state "more attractive to new businesses and . . . easier for
existing businesses to remain open."

The petition calls on
lawmakers to pass legislation to exempt the first $170,000 "or an
amount reflecting the actual rate of inflation" at the time the measure
is adopted, whichever figure is greater. It also calls for "mandatory
adjustment of the homestead exemption against inflation every four
years."

Jefferson Parish Assessor Lawrence Chehardy said he gave
Kahler permission to use some of the assessor's letters about the need
to raise the exemption. "I think it is wonderful," Chehardy said of the
drive. He said the assessors hope to use the petition to help pass
legislation to raise the exemption.

Legislation increasing
homeowner tax breaks traditionally draw the opposition of local school
board officials, business lobbyists and groups such as the Public
Affairs Research Council and the Council for a Better Louisiana, both
statewide issues-oriented research organizations.

Schools and other local government operations depend on property taxes for much of their financing.

Increasing
the tax break on homes, "shifts the burden to renters and business, and
business is already paying about 80 percent of the property taxes now,"
PAR President Jim Brandt said.

CABL President Barry Erwin
agreed: "This just redistributes the tax burden. It means somebody else
pays. We already have one of the highest homestead exemptions in the
entire country."

. . . . . . .

Ed Anderson can be reached at eanderson at timespicayune.com or 225.342.5810. 
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/thousands_sign_petition_asking.html
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