As we know, the Pennsylvania public school system has structural funding inequities.  The way Commonwealth schools are funded is systemically flawed, inadequate, and unfair.  We have been aware for decades, and it has recently been confirmed by the Commonwealth Court ruling, that students in low wealth districts are not afforded the opportunities they need to thrive, denying them a thorough and efficient education, and stunting development, often despite very high local tax rates. In addition, even districts with a strong residential tax base are disadvantaged compared to neighboring communities that happen to enjoy a large commercial tax base.  This structure unfairly burdens residential homeowners with a higher tax effort to sustain the educational opportunities of their local school district. 
 
Through the reform of commercial property tax, moving the distribution of the tax to a regional basis, this legislation is a beginning step in the process to eliminate the structural inequities that plague our public-school funding.  Often these large commercial property developments are regional employers, have regional impact, and are funded with the assistance of county, state, and federal grant dollars or regional economic development grants and loans; however, the property tax revenue is allocated locally only, despite the regional taxpayer support. This is fundamentally unfair to taxpayers.  
 
The thesis for the move to regionalize commercial property tax distribution is to provide a fairer and more just means to distribute funds.  With this legislation we can address a root cause of the disparities in our education system through regionalizing high value commercial property taxes.  By collecting commercial property taxes at the local school district level and distributing them based on the student population of each school district in the region, we can make significant improvement, closing the opportunity gap for our students and more equitably distributing the tax burdens across the Commonwealth. 
 
This legislation does not change the current tax rates, nor does it change the local taxing authority, it simply provides a more equitable distribution of the existing commercial tax base.

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 0448: P.L.30, No.14