Bill Description: House Bill 959 Amends and adds to existing law to provide for an initiative petition to raise or lower the property tax budgets for fire protection districts and ambulance service districts and to revise provisions regarding certain property tax budget limits.
Rating: (0)
Analysts note: House Bill 959 is a scaled-back version of H842, which failed on the House floor 28-41, and as we noted, would have likely raised taxes for broad categories of homeowners. The fiscal note for House Bill 959 makes no claim to any actual tax savings. The bill makes a number of limited changes to property taxes, but only for fire protection and ambulance districts. Some of which are positive and others negative. But the scope of H959 is much narrower than H842, necessarily subjecting far fewer taxpayers to a potential increase, and the impact will likely be concentrated in just a few fire protection and ambulance districts.
Does it directly or indirectly create or increase any taxes, fees, or other assessments? Conversely, does it eliminate or reduce any taxes, fees, or other assessments?
The bill allows fire protection and ambulance districts to increase their total property tax budgets by up to 15%, which is an increase from the current cap of 8% and would surely allow fast growing districts to increase their property tax budgets by more than they can currently. However, these districts would use the previous years’ levy rate in their calculations. While growth might mitigate the increase to homeowners, a higher cap will simply lead to higher taxes than they would have otherwise been with the current lower cap.
(-1)
New forgone tax revenue will no longer be allowed to be claimed after tax year 2026 for just these districts. This will eliminate an unfunded tax liability for future taxpayers. This change does not impact foregone already accumulated, which of course can be claimed under current law. However, unlike H842, this bill does not increase the rate of foregone recovery from 1% to 2% for maintenance and operations.
The total foregone balances in Idaho, according to Tax Commission data, are $133.3 million as of March 2026. Ambulance districts have accumulated $1.51 million of forgone, with Bonner the highest at $573,000 and Bannock the second highest at $290,000. Fire districts have accumulated $5.29 million of foregone, with Bonneville at $1.126 million, Nampa at $921,000, Whitney at $813,000, and Meridian at $785,000. Legislators would be wise to understand how this might impact homeowners in their districts.
(+1)
H959 adds a new chapter allowing for voters in fire protection and ambulance service districts to raise or lower property taxes via an initiative petition. To qualify, the petition requires signatures from at least 20% of the qualified electors from the most recent odd-year General Election. It is a fairly high bar, but again, since the petition could raise or lower property tax budgets for these districts, it can’t be considered a benefit to taxpayers.
(0)
