FARGO, N.D. – A report by North Dakota State University’s Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth analyzes the tradeoffs North Dakota Measure Four presents if passed. The report, available by clicking here, says, ‘It would be a mistake to think about property taxes at the state level, unless the state government succeeded in dictating the extent of taxes collected by local governments in the form of property taxes,’ which the report says the current ballot measure entails as an intervention.
“There is no neutral choice here,” the author of the report, Dr. James Caton, a scholar at the Challey Institute and an associate professor of economics in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at NDSU, said. “Either property taxes remain local and local sovereignty is maintained, or local revenues diminish and local governments become financially dependent upon higher levels of government.”
Caton says local governments are limited in power compared to the state.
“Local government is at the very heart of democracy,” he said.
Click here to read the Challey Institute report.
