by Hudson Kamphausen CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT – Key members of the General Assembly are considering a special session following a surprise move on the final day of this year’s legislative session regarding the state’s much-maligned car tax.
An amendment giving towns the option to repeal the long-detested tax – which some in the legislature have made their mission to repeal – was added on the last day of the session to a bill being debated on the Senate floor.
That bill – House Bill 5172 – would have changed the way in which motor vehicles are assessed for property taxes, but would not have repealed the car tax as a whole. However, the amendment proposed by Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, meant that it would have to go through the House again as amended.
That did not happen, and that bill was not called again in the lower chamber before the session ended.
The bill itself would have rectified a statute that is set to go into effect in October, which some advocates are saying could disproportionately affect low-income residents.
Essentially, the bill would have canceled out some of the provisions of the public act that is set to go into effect, including the possibility of certain motor vehicles being reclassified as regular property, as opposed to being assessed as motor vehicles.
The bill would have also adjusted a provision of the 2022 statute that will – if not changed – require towns to introduce a “depreciation schedule” so that the tax paid on a car decreases as the value of the car does the same.
It would have increased the starting rate of the 20-year schedule from 80% to 85%.
House Majority Leader Jason Rojas told the CT Mirror last week that there are ongoing conversations about a possible “special session” – which calls in the state’s legislators to work on specific issues – to fix the problem.
Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, a Democrat from Avon who co-chairs the Planning and Development Committee, echoed those comments to the Mirror.
“This isn’t something we can just leave alone,” she said.
Rojas called the aborted legislation “a must-do bill.”
Legislators have long been frustrated at an inability to repeal a tax that many call “regressive.”
Sen. MD Rahman, a Democrat from Manchester who co-chairs the Planning and Development Committee, has made it his mission over the past couple of years to find a way to remove the tax while not taking away important funding from the state’s 169 municipalities.
Fonfara said at the time that residents will look back in shock that there ever was a car tax in the state.
“We are an outlier in this country of states that have a car tax,” he said.
However, some members of Fonfara’s and Rahman’s caucus did not support the amendment, fearing it would do more harm than good.
Sen. Norm Needleman, who also serves as First Selectman of Essex, is one of the members of the upper chamber who opposed Fonfara’s amendment. He said during the debate that he did so because he felt the underlying statute was too important to be bogged down by the car tax appeal, which he saw as a potential death sentence for the bill.
Advocates for small towns have been hesitant to throw their support behind any legislation that would repeal the car tax, saying that it would cost too much money for small towns that lean heavily on the tax for funding.
While replacement techniques – such as raising the assessment rate for regular property – were baked into the amendment, the reticence remained during the debate.