Each year, Triangle counties spend hundreds of millions of dollars to pick up the state government’s slack: funding prosecutor positions in the district attorney’s office; housing state inmates in their jails; and propping up public school districts that are chronically underfunded at the state level.
And now Republicans in the legislature are considering limiting the source of upwards of 70% of county budgets: The property tax.
A Republican-led committee in the state House wants to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this November to set a statewide limit on local property tax increases.
This week, Durham, Orange, and Wake counties passed identical resolutions saying such an amendment would undercut their main revenue source and jeopardize their ability to provide essential services. The commissioners say they care about affordability, but that the legislature’s proposal doesn’t fix the real issue: that counties have been raising taxes to fill the gaps left by inflation, population growth, and a lack of state funding.
“[State legislators] are distracting people from what their job is, and focusing on what sounds great and sounds like a quick fix, but is actually completely disconnected from the source of the problem,” Durham county commissioner Wendy Jacobs told the INDY.
House Republicans argue that the amendment would give a break to residents who have seen property values and their tax bills skyrocket in recent years. Those county taxes account for more than two-thirds of the counties’ revenue and pay for community colleges, emergency medical services, libraries, parks and recreation, affordable housing, social services, public health, and county jails. Counties and the state have also argued—especially in the drawn-out Leandro lawsuit—over public schools, which Triangle counties have continuously raised taxes to fund in recent years. During this spring’s budget conversations, the Durham county budget manager warned that “The ability to [support Durham Public Schools] using natural growth and revenue has all but dissipated.”
Bond projects, like Wake’s upcoming school construction bond or Durham’s recent parks and infrastructure bond, often require a property tax increase, so limiting tax increases could also hamper counties’ ability to take on large-scale capital and infrastructure projects.
Wake County Board of Commissioners chair Don Mial told the INDY that capping property taxes would hamstring the county’s ability to provide essential services to a growing population.
“In Wake County, we have 1.2 million people, and we’re growing by 66 people per day, and that requires a lot of resources,” Mial said.
One of the committee’s co-chairs is Rep. Erin Paré, whose southern Wake County district covers Holly Springs and part of Fuquay-Varina. Mial said the county commissioners directly appealed to Paré with their concerns about the proposed amendment.
“Her biggest thing is that … she’s getting a lot of pushback from some citizens about tax increases,” Mial said. “But I don’t think that those citizens really understand the operation of the county. Those services that they receive come from municipalities and the county, and the state does not [cover] a whole lot.”
The language in the resolutions passed by Durham, Orange, and Wake Counties comes from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC), a nonpartisan group that lobbies the legislature on behalf of county governments. The NCACC is arguing that a constitutional tax limit would undermine local control and fiscal stability, and is encouraging all counties to pass similar resolutions.
“We have been proposing changes for years that would alleviate the burden on our lowest-income taxpayers, and they’ve fallen on deaf ears,” Wake County commissioner Vickie Adamson said during the board of commissioners’ Tuesday meeting.
Triangle counties have tried to address the rising cost of living through programs like Durham County’s Low Income Homeowner Relief Program, Wake’s Elderly or Disabled Homestead Exclusion, or Orange’s Longtime Homeowners Assistance (LHA) program. But the scope of those programs is limited by, you guessed it, the state legislature. The counties have lobbied the legislature to expand tax relief eligibility and let them collect progressive property taxes or income taxes, to no avail.
The amendment wouldn’t be the first time in recent years that the legislature has stripped power away from local governments: in 2024, Senate Bill 382 severely limited local governments’ zoning authority. The bill has halted Durham’s efforts to rewrite its land use codes to encourage housing density and infill housing within the urban core. Proponents proponents of the rewrite say it would provide additional property tax revenue to local governments and limit developments on the outskirts of the city that already strained service providers—like police, EMS and public schools—would have to reach.
To get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot, Republicans would need to approve it by three-fifths majorities in both the House and Senate. In the House, they’d need at least one Democrat to join them to clear that bar. Once on the ballot, the amendment would need to pass by a simple majority of votes and then the legislature would decide what limit to set.
“Hopefully they listen to us and back off,” Mial said. “And if they set a cap, make it a reasonable cap.”
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