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Senate advances House Bill 397 after heated debate over property-tax shift
Summary
After extended debate, the Utah Senate advanced House Bill 397 (property tax amendments) on second reading 20–9. Supporters said the measure settles legal exposure from the AMEX decision; opponents said it shifts roughly $11.5 million onto locally assessed businesses and urged delay or offsets.
Representative John Valentine urged the Senate to adopt the third substitute of House Bill 397 to correct disparities exposed by the AMEX court decision and avoid larger retroactive liabilities. "This allows us to recapture the majority of that money from the same entities that will be deriving the benefit," Valentine said during his opening remarks.
Senator John Peterson and other proponents described the bill as a technical and fiscal package: a transition-year homeowner exemption of 29.75 percent (reduced to 29.5 percent in 1992), a permissive intangible discount of up to…
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