Circuit breaker law may expand

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 17, 2008 | by Joseph M. Dougherty Deseret News

Utah legislators are tackling the state's circuit breaker law to expand property tax relief to lower income residents.

Rep. Gage Froerer, R-Huntsville, has proposed legislation that would add a new income bracket to the homeowner's and renter's credit part of the circuit breaker program to help qualifying households that make up to $33,000 a year.

The current circuit breaker law helps qualifying households that make up to $26,941 a year.

The proposed law also increases the homeowner's credit amount for each income bracket, and for the highest bracket, homeowners could receive a $50 credit.

Froerer acknowledged that $50 isn't a lot of money, but it's something.

Sen. Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, said it's important to provide relief to homeowners.

But if the legislation advances, he predicted it's "going to run headlong into the wall of a fiscal note in the budget crunch," meaning that the upcoming lean budget year could cause problems for bills like Froerer's, which is estimated to have a $220,000 price tag.

The same thing could happen to Rep. Tim Cosgrove's, D-Murray, proposals, which would increase income brackets in the circuit breaker by $1,000 or allow either a $50 or $100 credits depending on the number of dependents in the qualifying household.

Cosgrove's first set of proposals -- increasing the income brackets -- could cost the state up between $58,000 and $596,000 a year. And his second set -- dealing with credits for qualifying households -- could cost the state between $119,500 and $565,000 a year.

Froerer said he would entertain postponing the effective date of his bill if it gets killed because of the state's coming reductions in spending.

"I think this is a bill that should have been passed last year and would have been passed if we hadn't run out of time," he said.

E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com