Gov. Matt Meyer allowed a bill to become law without his signature, which indefinitely extends a split property tax rate that New Castle County school districts can apply to commercial and residential property.
Meyer’s office said, “he can't endorse legislation that treats apartments and other residential rental communities as commercial property.”
The new law is sponsored by State Rep. Kim Williams (D-Stanton). It's one of multiple measures that she and other lawmakers introduced this session, as New Castle County continues to make corrections to inequitably assessed properties from its first-in-decades process completed in 2024.
Williams said that without an extension of the split rate,"(homeowner's) taxes would have went up and the commercial properties would have went down, like when the original bills went out."
Meyer's office said after the split rate northern school districts got to apply for 2025-2026 taxes, "several school districts adopted split tax rates that grouped apartment communities with warehouses, office parks, and industrial sites."
The split rate to apply for 2026-2027 lowers the commercial property rate cap from 100% above the residential rate to 85% above the residential rate, to address concerns heard from businesses in the last year.
Meyer's statement said he supports legislation to classify multifamily housing as residential property, and caps for apartment school-tax rates at 120% of the residential rate. But to not pass Williams' legislation at this point could hurt schools' finances.
But Williams, who was on the 2025 Special Committee on Property Reassessment, said Meyer's preferred approach isn't a simple fix.
The first split rate faced legal hurdles under the Delaware constitution's uniformity clause, which says taxes must be uniform upon the same class of subjects, and requires a revenue neutral approach. And Williams argued legislature could face again if it reclassified rental housing to residential.
If the legislature changes or adds property classifications, it needs to investigate the legality of doing so through legislation or if a constitutional amendment is necessary, she said. And other housing groups, like manufactured homes, might also expect to be included.
Williams added Meyer's proposal to reclassify rental properties doesn't guarantee a benefit for people who live there.
"I'm not saying that all apartment complexes would not share the reduction in taxation," she said. "But we can't guarantee that, and we can't force them to."
Meyer's release Friday said that Williams' bill addresses the "most extreme disparities," of the reassessment, but puts, "a fundamentally flawed classification into permanent statute."
In 2020, a judge ruled declared that Delaware's property tax system unconstitutional. At the time, New Castle County hadn't conducted a reassessment in more than 40 years.
Williams said she, "wasn't expecting something of perfection" from Meyer, who was New Castle County's Executive from 2017 to January 2025, when mandatory reassessments started in all three of Delaware's counties.
She called his Friday statement, "disheartening...when it all started under his leadership."
The General Assembly held a special session in 2025, after New Castle County residents complained about steep increases to their bills.
"We were handed this issue, and we've been trying to deal with it," she said. "...so he should have just signed a bill, thanked us, and said there's more work to do."
Meyer also allowed another property assessment bill for New Castle County, SB 228, to take effect without his signature in February. It ensures New Castle County’s Office of Finance's power to review the reassessed value of nonresidential property.
