Monday, March 29, 2010

And now, we wait.

Last Wednesday, March 24 our horse boarding property tax bill received a hearing in the Minnesota House of Representatives. As in the Senate, I testified on behalf of the Minnesota Horse Council with its President, Mark Ward. Our chief author in the House is Rep. Bob Dettmer of Forest Lake, and we owe him our thanks for carrying this bill and inviting bipartisan support.

Our proposed legislation has no opposition and a growing number of co-authors from both sides of the aisle. This is in large part due to the hard work done in advance over several months of participation in the Minnesota Department of Revenue's study work-group in which the peculiar problems of property tax classification of equine property were thoroughly explored and discussed. Our bill resulted from this effort and MDOR has supported it --and us-- by reassuring legislators that the new language would clarify the standard for agricultural classification applicable to commercial horse boarding property. We are all reaching for statewide uniformity, and the new language would help accomplish that.

Our bill in both houses of the Legislature has been "laid aside" for possible inclusion in an omnibus tax bill. Because of the broad and noncontroversial support it enjoys, we are hopeful that our bill would be included in a technical or non-controversial tax bill that both parties could endorse and that the Governor would sign. There is little left we can do, except to call our State Senators and Representatives to thank them for paying attention to this important issue and to encourage their continued support for its passage into law.

For up-to-the-minute status reports on our bill's progress, you may subscribe to "Bill Tracker" at our Legislature's web site. Here are some easy links:

Bill Search and Status
Text of HF 3107
Text of SF 2685

Thanks to you, too for your interest and support!