By: Morgan Chilson
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — House and Senate lawmakers are pursuing a last-ditch attempt to deliver on their promise to bring property tax relief to constituents before the session ends.
A conference committee on taxes met Friday morning, the last day of the session, to hammer out details of Senate Concurrent Resolution 1603 that may offer a way forward.
The proposed Kansas constitutional amendment, which would go before Kansas voters in August, limits annual increases a property’s assessed valuation to 9%. The assessed valuation is determined by taking 11.5% of the property’s expected sale price.
For example, if a home is appraised at $100,000, the assessed valuation would be $11,500.
In a compromise that appears unpalatable to the House, Rep. Adam Smith, a Weskan Republican, agreed to a fixed cap on assessed valuations rather than a cap based on a rolling average.
“That’s a pretty significant change,” he said. “Everything that we’ve passed in the House has had that average in. Everything that’s failed has been a cap, but I’m willing to try stepping away from that as long as we can have a fixed cap at a higher rate.”
Previous property tax bills proposed capping the assessed value at 3%.
Smith proposed a 10% cap but Parker Republican Sen. Caryn Tyson negotiated the deal to 9%.
Some Kansas counties have seen assessed valuations increase by as much as 60% between 2021 and 2025, with many others falling in the 40% to 50% range, according to the Kansas Policy Institute, a proponent of capping the rates at 3%.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, said she is frustrated that such an important issue wasn’t dealt with earlier in the session instead of “scrambling” at the last minute.
“Republicans chose to push wedge issues, cultural issues, and not really address property tax,” she said. “Now we are in the last final hours of this session, and legislators are tired. Things are not thoroughly thought out. There’s not time for the public to comment, and they’re trying to rush and throw something together that will have unintended consequences.”
Sykes said local governments fund their budgets through property taxes. Pressing a lever to lower property taxes — such as artificial caps on property taxes that could impede growth — will have consequences, she said.
“It’s going to hurt these communities, and it’s not going to provide that property tax relief that we are trying to sell to Kansans because the mill levy could change,” she said.
Local governments consider how much money they need to fund their budget, and then they set the mill levies to raise that amount of money, she said.
A mill equals $1 for each $1,000 of assessed value. For the house with a $11,500 valuation, the property tax for 1 mill would be $11.50.
Counties set their mill levies to raise the dollars needed to fund their budget. For example, Shawnee County’s mill levy for 2026 is 48.917. The homeowner in this example would pay $562.55 in property taxes to fund the county budget. This bill doesn’t limit or change mill levies.
Sykes said that piece of the puzzle isn’t discussed at the Capitol and that local government services are important for her constituents.
“The cities that I represent, I pulled their constituent satisfaction surveys that they do,” she said. “They want that when they call 911, the fire or the police are going to respond. They like having good roads.”
Smith, who is a fan of caps for property tax relief, said real change will come at local government levels.
“We can put all those things in place, but the real relief would come at the local level more than anywhere else,” he said. “We can cap it. We can adjust evaluations. We can do all the things we’re talking about. But if you’re in a county where property taxes keep going up and there’s no end in sight, I would really defer to the fact that you probably need some new county commissioners.”
Smith said he encourages his constituents to look at local budgets if they really want to affect property taxes.
“Talk to your local officials, and if you’re not thrilled with some of the answers, perhaps you vote for someone else,” he said.
The new proposal is expected Friday to be voted on in the House and Senate, but Sykes was unsure what the result will be.
“I think tensions are high, and I think it’s just like throwing a whole bunch of darts at the dart board and seeing what sticks,” she said.