How fitting that in second-year legislative sessions new bills are supposed to be emergencies. As they return to business today, lawmakers will confront the unfinished business of tax reform, an emergency of amazing duration. Though a final vote remains on the Maine Municipal Association’s 1A option from last fall, the Legislature should quickly agree that targeting substantial property tax relief to those most in need is the best short-term solution to this problem.

Long term, an overall reduction in tax rates, a reduction in the steepness of the graduated income tax and a new assessment of what should fall under the sales tax are all necessary. But the property tax comes first, by virtue of the last referendum and the public demand that brought the referendum to the voting booth, and the biggest break should go to those who pay a significant portion of their incomes to their municipalities through this tax.

Figuring out how the property tax should be applied or excused begins with a review of wealth – a difficult idea to pin down in a time when wealth is measured partly by copyrights and patents or stocks and bonds. Rep. Peter Mills recently urged simplicity when looking at taxing wealth. “We don’t have Alaska’s oil,” he said, “Connecticut’s insurance companies, New York’s stock exchanges, Wyoming’s coal or California’s silicon capitalists; but we do have some of the finest real estate on earth and lots of it. It is perhaps the biggest reason people move here.”

The current average municipal mill rate of 18 hasn’t changed much over the decades. But municipal tax rates hit the owners of this real estate sometimes heavily and sometimes barely at all depending on many factors, including assessed values, incomes of the property owners or state tax programs that try to encourage a social good – for example, Tree Growth.

If nothing else, lawmakers should agree to provide immediate relief to those who pay a substantial portion of their incomes to property taxes by expanding the state’s circuit-breaker program. Several lawmakers have proposed versions of this. It should further agree that state revenue sharing with municipalities – the amount of money the state sends back to cities and towns to help pay for local services – should also be based on need with those towns with the highest mill rates receiving considerably more. Those communities, lawmakers will find, are not spendthrifts but service centers, providing programs and supporting tax-exempt properties that benefit their surrounding regions.

The governor’s office and the Maine Municipal Association have been meeting regularly since the November vote to look for a compromise on property-tax relief. The proposals above do not fully satisfy either the governor’s office or the MMA, but they would provide relief to those who feel the property-tax burden most. After years of debate, they would represent a positive, if modest, outcome.