Not giving up on property tax solution

Greetings! Hope your Christmas was merry and you all enjoyed family and friends celebrating the birth of the Christ child. I promised to start talking about the 101st legislative session. The session starts Jan. 13.
A couple of challenges are the governor’s budget has zero pay increases for “the big three,” health care providers, state employees and school teachers. Ironically, the governor wants to increase our savings from the usual 10 percent to 12.5 percent. Yep, not making that up. How about we don’t save anything and take the proposed 12 percent and give it to the big three? Also, there is a $14 million surplus in his budget, so let’s take that amount with the 12.5 percent and give to pay raises for the big three.
I am sick and tired of being a poor state. I believe your financial being is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want to always be a poor state, you will. But if, on the other hand, you want to have a state treasury that has the necessary money to take care of our obligations, we can do that too if we so desire.
So, here’s where I’m going with this. Last year I prime-sponsored HB1016, which was a property tax relief bill. Actually, Rep. Tony Venhuizen was the prime sponsor, but became the lieutenant governor half way through session, so I primed the bill after he left the House. HB1016 was sent to the State Affairs Committee, not the Tax Committee, and was defeated. Basically it is dead, right?
Wrong. I hog housed HB1016, which means if the majority of the 70-person body on the floor wants to hear it, it bypasses the committee process. When you move to do this “hog house” you take another bill and basically steal it just using that bill’s title because it is way past the deadline for proposing bills. 
On your delivery to the body, you can’t talk about the bill, only why you didn’t think it had a fair hearing. So, I did that. I basically said HB1016 was sent to the wrong committee for a hearing (State Affairs vs. Tax Committee) along with 19 other property tax relief bills. I, therefore, asked for favorable consideration to hear the bill on the House floor. I was successful and House Bill 1016 got a full debate. The vote was 35 yea, 34 nay, one absent. We needed 47 to pass as a two-thirds vote is required for any increase in spending. I disagree with that as well.
Here is why. What HB1016 did was take state sales tax, currently 4.2¢, and increase it to 5¢, the same as North Dakota. This would generate $280 million dollars, of which the entire amount would be earmarked in the law for owner-occupied only home owners. This would include rancher’s and farmer’s homes.
What this does is decrease $417 for every $100,000 assessment. If your house is assessed at $500,000-, it would decrease your property tax $417 X 5 =$2,085.00. That, I say, is a tax shift, giving, for once, a property tax break to the bill payers (those being the homeowners of this state). There is no cost to the counties, schools or towns. It is paid for up front.
The part I need your help selling is the return on investment with this bill. If every homeowner gets, say, an average of $2,000 tax break, I say they’ll spend the money, and when it is spent, it is at 5¢ sales tax, not 4.2¢.
This would result in our treasury busting at the seams and we could meet all our financial obligations and give the big three a nice raise while at the same time giving our homeowners a well deserved property tax reduction.
Do you agree?