Betsy Russell reports House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star, introduced legislation this morning to cut the budgets of local taxing districts whenever anyone gets a big new property tax exemption – like the big one lawmakers granted to Micron Technology several years ago when they capped its taxable value; that exemption is now shifting $2.5 million a year in taxes to other taxpayers in the county as a result. “So we’re trying to figure out how not to make that shift happen,” Moyle told the House Revenue & Taxation Committee. He said his bill also would cut local taxing districts’ budgets when, say, a church buys property and builds a tax-exempt church, or a non-profit hospital buys a for-profit clinic property, or a highway district buys property for a public road.

Rep. Bill Killen, D-Boise, said, “I think I understand what your bill does, but I don’t understand why it does it.” Killen said if, for example, a big Boise hospital buys a nearby private clinic, “Police, fire, everything else has to continue to service that property. … You’re going to reduce the budgets of those responsible jurisdictions. They have the same level of service they have to provide, but now they have fewer dollars to provide it. Why is that a good idea?”