Please email or call your Senators this morning.  The Michigan Senate is scheduled to start session at 10am and is planning on voting on a proposal to significantly cut the personal property tax on businesses.  Senate bills 1065-1072 will exempt all businesses with commercial or industrial personal property valued under $40,000 from the tax beginning in December 2012 and will exempt all industrial personal property over a seven year period beginning in 2016.

The estimated revenue impact is a loss of $636 million to schools and local units of government when the bills are fully implemented.  Senate bill 1072 creates a fund that is intended to reimburse locals and schools up to 89% of all lost revenues beginning in 2016.  The problem with this plan is that the current legislature can not bind a future legislature, nor can it appropriate money to the fund.  This creates a need for a major degree of trust on our part and based on past legislative practices schools are more likely to lose the revenues than we are to see replacement funding. ...