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If state legislators thought a relatively new law requiring local governments to jump through extra hoops in order to raise property taxes was going to deter such tax hikes, they largely have been wrong.

More precisely, in Douglas County this year, they are 85% wrong.

County officials recently have compiled the annual list of proposed tax rates for every city, township, school board, fire district and other jurisdictions in the county. Of the 34 different entities that collect property taxes in Douglas County, just five of them this year have decided to forgo an increase in property tax collections.

The other 85% are increasing the amount of money they are collecting in property taxes, and often at a rate far greater than inflation.

All this data — compiled by the Douglas County Clerk’s office, the state’s administration department and analyzed by the Journal-World — is courtesy of a 2021 state law that requires governments to calculate their “revenue neutral rate.” That’s a calculation that shows what a government’s property tax rate would be if it simply wanted to collect the same amount of property taxes as it did a year ago.

It probably is not surprising that few governments are voluntarily choosing to forgo additional property tax collections. After all, you probably would not voluntarily choose to live on the same amount of money you did a year ago, especially given what inflation has been doing to prices over the last year.

I suspect state lawmakers in 2021 didn’t really expect the new law and its reporting requirements would dissuade many governments from holding tax collections steady. Instead, the purpose of the law might be to make it easier to see how much property tax collections are increasing.

Indeed, this year’s Douglas County numbers tell a story. Of the 34 governments in Douglas County, 22 of them are increasing property tax rates to fund their 2024 budgets at more than twice the rate of what inflation is expected to be in 2024.

And that analysis is probably being a little generous to governments. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m using a projected rate of inflation in 2024 of 4%, even though most economists are predicting the consumer price index to increase by about 3.5% in the coming year.

So, which local governments are doing what? We’ll start with the some of the biggest governments, Douglas County and the four cities in the county. Below is the percentage that each government is proposing to increase property tax collections by for 2024.

• Douglas County: up 6.18%

• Baldwin City: up 9.13%

• Eudora: up 11.31%

• Lawrence: up 8.13%

• Lecompton: up 6.15%

It is probably time for a few disclaimers. I’m passing along the data, but not passing judgement on whether the proposed increases are reasonable. I’ll leave that you, and I would caution you to think about each government’s own situation. If a small city, for instance, suddenly has added 2,000 new residents it must serve, and 10 miles of streets that it must maintain, it may be reasonable that its property tax collections are increasing at a rate significantly greater than inflation. After all, it has a lot more expenses — and importantly — more households and businesses to collect taxes from.

But what does this mean in terms of dollars and cents to you? I can’t tell you, specifically. Property taxes are not user friendly. Your actual tax bill is dependent on your specific property and how much the county appraiser says your property changed in value. But we can look at what this means to a hypothetical $200,000 home. Simply put, we know the revenue neutral rate for each government. We know the proposed tax rate for each government. We can calculate how much the hypothetical homeowner would have been charged with revenue neutral rate, and how much the homeowner would be charged with the proposed rate. The list below shows the difference between the two rates, and the dollar and cents difference on the hypothetical annual tax bill.

• Douglas County: up 2.573 mills, $59.18 increase in annual property taxes.

• Baldwin City: up 3.751 mills, $86.27 increase

• Eudora: 4.013 mills, $92.30 increase

• Lawrence: 2.496 mills, $57.41 increase

• Lecompton: 1.43 mills, $32.89 increase

A couple of notes: Remember you pay the county tax and the tax of the city you are in. So, for a Lawrence owner of our hypothetical home, the total increase is a little more than $115 a year. Second, you might find it odd that the Lawrence and Douglas County increases are about equal, even though the first chart showed Lawrence is growing its property taxes more quickly. The reason is because Lawrence collects fewer property taxes than Douglas County. In other words, it is a bigger percentage on a smaller number.

Lawrence relies less on property taxes than the county because state law allows the city of Lawrence to charge and keep much larger amounts of sales tax dollars than Douglas County. Given that, it is interesting that Lawrence — which relies much less on property taxes to fund its operations than the county — is the entity growing property tax collections at the faster rate. Douglas County’s tax collections are growing more slowly because county commissioners decided to cut its tax rate by about 2 mills while the city of Lawrence simply decided to keep its mill levy flat from a year ago.

If taxpayers have questions about those type of decisions, the place to ask them is at a budget hearing. State law requires each government to hold a hearing before finalizing their budgets. The city of Lawrence’s hearing will be part of its 5:45 p.m. meeting on Tuesday at City Hall. Douglas County will hold its hearing at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 30 at the Douglas County Courthouse. Check this link to see budget hearing times and dates for other area governments at douglascountyks.org/depts/county-clerk. See the announcement for revenue neutral rate hearings 2023.

Here’s information on a few more governments.

• The five governments that are budgeting to keep their property tax collections steady from a year ago are: Eudora Township; Marion Township; Wakarusa/Haskell/Eudora Drainage District; Wakarusa Kaw Drainage District; and the Northeast Kansas Library District.

• School districts are big-time reliers on property taxes to fund their operations. But comparing property tax rates of school districts to the city and county can get very complicated. In short, local school boards have less local control in setting their total property tax rates than cities and counties do. They also have about four different property tax rates for four different funds. I’m going to show you the general fund, which the state law says must be set at 20 mills. So, a school district couldn’t lower that rate if wanted to. But the state does make it calculate a revenue neutral rate for some reason, and here’s the difference between the revenue neutral rate and the actual 20 mill rate for each of the three Douglas County based districts: USD 348 Baldwin, up 10.75%; USD 491 Eudora, up 11.61%; USD 497 Lawrence, up 11.38%

• Finally, the state of Kansas also charges a property tax rate. It charges a flat 1.5 mills per year, meaning that it frequently exceeds the revenue neutral rate despite being the entity that created the revenue neutral law. This year, the state’s property tax collections are set to grow 10.95%, but because their collections are spread over the entire state, our hypothetical $200,000 home would see an increase of just $3.40 per year in property taxes due to the state.

• Douglas County has lots of other governments that charge property taxes, including townships, cemetery boards, fire districts, and drainage districts. To see a complete list of each government that is exceeding the revenue neutral rate, go to the Douglas County Clerk’s website at douglascountyks.org/depts/county-clerk