“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.”
Karen Crane is unalterably opposed to the repeal of Juneau’s senior and disabled veterans property tax exemptions. For that reason, I was stunned by David Summers’ Feb. 19 letter in the Empire which irresponsibly claimed that she supported doing away with those exemptions.
State law requires municipalities to exempt the first $150,000 value of primary homes belonging to seniors and disabled veterans. That law also provides that the state shall reimburse a city for the real property tax revenues the city loses because of the exemption. Despite the law, the Legislature has refused to reimburse local governments. For that reason the Alaska Municipal League’s membership (of which Juneau is a part) has objected to this unfunded mandate, arguing instead that the decision on property tax exemptions should be left to each individual community to decide — the essence of local control.
Summers would have you believe that this is some new policy that has been contrived to deprive Juneau citizens of the exemption. What Summers doesn’t say — perhaps because he doesn’t know and didn’t do his homework assignment — is that AML’s opposition to unfunded mandates has been in place since Ken Koelsch first served on the Juneau Assembly in the late 1990s and has been endorsed by every Juneau Assembly to the present day.
This issue is a straw man. No Assembly member has advocated repealing this exemption. Just the opposite: they understand why this exemption helps make Juneau more livable for seniors and disabled veterans. No one understands this better than Karen Crane.
The candidates’ positions on property tax exemptions are fair game for discussion. But Crane has confirmed with me that Summers never contacted her about her position either before or after publishing his letter. Let’s not allow campaign surrogates to resort to innuendo. Instead, let’s encourage the Empire to ask both candidates where they stand on this and other important issues.
Bruce Botelho
Juneau