Property tax cuts won’t be on the ballot in Wyoming this year.
The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Tuesday that the committee pushing a property tax cut ballot initiative had not filed signatures by the deadline to get the measure on the 2024 ballot. Signatures have to be filed before the start of the legislative session of the year applicants wish to put their measure up for a vote. This year’s session started Monday.
“The Committee of Applicants has not filed their petitions with our office,” Joe Rubino, chief policy officer for the Secretary of State’s Office, said in a Tuesday email to WyoFile. “In order for the initiative to appear on the 2024 ballot, petitions would need to have been filed prior to the commencement of the 2024 Legislative Session.”
Rubino noted that committee members still have 18 months from the date they received their petitions from the Secretary of State’s Office to gather the required signatures and put their measure on the ballot for a future election (the next being in 2026). This particular initiative has until mid-April 2025 to continue collecting signatures.
“We fully intend to still file,” former Republican gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, who is leading the statewide ballot initiative, told WyoFile. “We’re also watching this legislative session to see if any meaningful tax relief comes out.”
Bien told WyoFile that committee members still intended to get the measure on the 2024 ballot. But the Secretary of State’s Office confirmed that they would not be able to do so.
Though Wyoming has some of the lowest property taxes in the U.S., skyrocketing housing prices in parts of the state have put a strain on homeowners carrying the burden of higher tax bills. That’s led to a grassroots push for property tax reform. This measure is one of several attempts to address the situation, the other being several measures under consideration in the statehouse.
The ballot measure would slash property taxes while also cutting into local government funding. It proposes to exempt 50% of the assessed value for property used as a primary residence for at least six months a year. The owner would need to have been a state resident for at least one year to qualify.
The Secretary of State’s Office and the Department of Revenue’s fiscal analysis of the initiative estimated it would result in local revenue losses of $137 million in 2025 and $141 million in 2026. (Money from property taxes doesn’t go to the state. It goes to local governments.)
But that hasn’t deterred tax reform advocates.
“We’re still cooking along,” Bien told WyoFile.
He said around 600 volunteers around the state are still out collecting signatures for the measure and estimated that the initiative has garnered close to 40,000 signatures, though these still have to be validated. Signatures can be invalidated when, for example, there are repeats, or the signee is not a registered Wyoming voter. The property tax initiative will need 29,730 valid signatures, with 15% of voters from at least 16 Wyoming counties included in that count.
“We’re just looking at voter rolls, those kinds of things,” Bien said. “So we’re not sure exactly where we stand with this stuff, and that’s kind of where we’re sitting.”
The ballot initiative process allows citizens to bypass the Legislature and put issues up for a vote. But getting a proposal on the ballot is arduous — particularly in Wyoming, which has the most stringent signature requirements of any state in the country, according to Ballotpedia.
Addressing rising residential property taxes is a priority for the Legislature this year. Besides five committee-sponsored bills, individual lawmakers have so far brought more than a dozen additional measures aimed at addressing the issue. Several of these bills have already died in the first couple of days of the session.
This article has been updated to clarify that the committee has until April 2025 to collect signatures.
While Property Taxes are a major problem, this initiative was never the solution. It takes away too much from local government. This article does a great job of specifying that point. The initiative organizers continually stated this would not effect local government. The people in my county who came around for sigunatures did not have any real information about this, the facts of how it effected the county, they just kept saying don’t you want to save 50%. The legislature now needs to step up and fix this problem.
This article was very accurate. I personally have supported this initiative and even helped to collect signatures. I did it with the understanding that it was going to be filed for the 2024 upcoming election so that the people of Wyoming could see property tax relief immediately. That hopefully the legislature would see fit to find true reform of a very broken system. I am disappointed that the filing deadline for 2024 was missed. This is going to affect a lot of people. I know that a lot of people signed with the hopes that they could voice their opinion and right to vote on the initiate this fall, to unfortunately see that it did not make the ballot all because the signatures of 30,000 plus were not turned in and then verified. So we now have to wait two more years for this to be seen and voted on.
Very good and accurate article! I was hoping for a different title and the opposite outcome.
Stories about property tax in Wyoming should include the refund program that is already in place for those who qualify within the income guidelines.
https://wptrs.wyo.gov/ As a long time senior homeowner with limited income, I have received nearly half of my annual taxes back for the past two years and am very grateful. The application process is not difficult.
Inflation is coming back. So that will compound the issues. Why won’t politicians be forward thinking? They only reactive when issues get out of hand. But we can thank Democrats for electing a “senile feeble minded old man”. Not my words. Signs were there on Biden prior to election. Now we live with the consequences of 2 wars. Drugs ravaging another genera and migrants to support for for years to come. Thanks Joe and all who supports him. Past & Present. Have a Bird on me.
From the WYSOS website Feb. 14, 2024 “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Tax in Wyoming through a Homeowner’s Property Exemption
Circulation Dates: October 13, 2023 – April 13, 2025”
https://sos.wyo.gov/Elections/InitiativeReferendumInfo.aspx