Interview transcript:
Tom Byrne:
Let's start with this week's special session. Are you, writ-large, pleased, satisfied, with the short-term solutions that were delivered to provide residents some relief for the substantial tax increases that some of them are seeing on their bills after reassessment?
Gov. Matt Meyer:
My family came to Delaware when I was a baby. And my parents chose to come here because it was an affordable place to live, high-quality community, great schools.
I ran because I think that we need to maintain that characteristic of Delaware, of being an affordable place to live, having high-quality communities and high-quality schools. I think there's a sense across our state, New astle County certainly, in recent weeks with the property tax bill, that we're losing that. And so anything that takes a step forward to say, we're maintaining our low property tax state designation is really important to me.
I think that the special session is a step forward. I'm not sure it solves everything. There are still, based on the little I've seen, the little data I've seen, there's some discrepancies in assessments. It's got to be fair. It's got to be accurate. And we also have to make sure we're investing money to improve our schools.
So, I think there are some things that were really good. I signed all the bills already, immediately after they were passed. But I think it's really important that we keep our eye on the ball. We don't just say, “woo-hoo, we're done,” pat ourselves on the back. There are people still hurting. There are people looking at their property tax bills even today, even once adjustments are made.
I think they're talking about some districts potentially making some changes and resending bills. I imagine there's still going to be people out there that are hurting, and we're going to keep looking and seeing what we can do.
Tom Byrne:
But this was clearly a Band-Aid solution for now. And you look at it that way.
Gov. Meyer:
Well, I think it was a step forward. You got to understand that for over four decades, they didn't reassess in New Castle County. In Kent County, it was three and a half decades. In Sussex County, it's over five decades. This is not a problem that's going to be fixed overnight. It's not a problem that's going to be fixed by one person, right, or even one government. It's county government, school district, state government, all saying, okay, how do we get this system right that has been wrong for a long time?
And so, I wouldn't say that this special session was a Band-Aid. I think it was a step to address, an attempt to address decades of inaccuracies in tax bills that Delawareans are receiving.
The county government under my leadership and now under Marcus Henry's leadership up in New Castle County took some steps forward. The school districts have taken some steps forward, maybe a few missteps along the way. They’re course correcting. And I think in the end, we're going to be all right. There's still a lot more work to do.
Sarah Petrowich:
At one point during the special session, you were personally called to the floor to testify on how New Castle County carried out its reassessment process in your capacity as the former county executive. That call was from Republican Representative Mike Smith, who then took to Facebook to criticize your lack of involvement in the bills.
House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown also told members of the press there seems to be a lot of “unanswered questions around New Castle County's reassessment process under your tenure” and said she'd also be happy to hear from you. Do you have a response to what these legislators said?
Gov. Meyer:
There's a lot of politics. I mean, Speaker Minor-Brown and I have had numerous conversations in recent days about reassessment, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about reassessment.
So, I don't know what kind of politics… People, anytime there's a crisis like this, anytime there's unfairness, there are people who jump in and try to take advantage of it. Since day one, since we were sued back when I was county executive, I said how do we put our head down and how do we solve this for the good of everyone in this state? This is something that's been an issue long before I first ran for office as a sixth and seventh grade math teacher eight years ago.
This is something that… the lack of a reassessment has done active harm to our children. This is something that we need elected officials to stand up with courage and say we're gonna fix this. It's hard, and we're gonna fix it in a way that's fair to everyone.
Clearly, tax bills came out the last few months in New Castle County, and people looked and said, ah, this isn't really fair, so we got to put our pencils back on the drawing board and see what we can come up with.
Tom Byrne:
Having said that, do you have any second thoughts on the process and how it was handled in New Castle County? Would you go back and change anything, or at this point, say, hey, looking forward, we need to do this, the county needs to do this, somebody needs to do X, Y, or Z?
Gov. Meyer:
I think that someone should take a look at the reassessments that Tyler Technology did. There seemed to be some clear errors.
One of the errors, I believe, is a family home, my parents' house, that is assessed $300,000 higher than an appraisal we got a couple weeks ago. $5,000 increase in my parents' school taxes. My parents are, my dad’s in his 90s. These are school taxes I'm ultimately going to be responsible for. You're talking about more than doubling of school taxes. I'm just sharing that.
I know many Delawareans and many New Castle County residents are facing the same, so I think there are a number of issues into that, those dramatic spikes. I think one of the issues is we got to make sure that the assessed values are actually accurate.
Tom Byrne:
A lot of people have talked about, Tyler Technologies did the reassessments in all three counties.
Gov. Meyer:
Right. Actually, I tried, as county executive, to get all three counties to bid it together because I thought we'd get a better deal. Before that even, to be honest, I didn't want to use Tyler Technologies. I wanted to, I thought that we could, listen, you want to know your home value? Have you been on Zillow? Why are we spending 10 million, 15 million dollars to pay a contractor to go around?
Tom Byrne:
I would assume it's because that's what the court would expect you to do. The court's not going to accept Zillow as the best…
Gov. Meyer:
Correct. It became very clear that we couldn't use the latest technology to do it.
We'd have to send people door to door. I personally, and I expressed it fairly freely, did not think that made the most sense. There's something called the IAAO, International Assessment, International Association of Assessment Officers. They have standards. Their standard is that after seven or 10 years, you have to send people door to door. We sent people door to door.
When I look at the results, as a Delawarean, just looking at some samples, some of it seems to be accurate, a lot of it seems not to be accurate.
Tom Byrne:
And I guess there's also the issue of commercial versus residential, right? And that's where, perhaps, you need something different, and maybe Tyler Technology just didn't do right by New Castle County as opposed to Sussex and Kent.
Gov. Meyer:
Yeah, I haven't looked at that in particular. But it's certainly true that there has been a movement towards where residential values are increasing at a higher rate than commercial values in New Castle County, and that's an issue.
Sarah Petrowich:
You mentioned school taxes. Additional questions and concerns have been raised over school districts' ability to raise revenues by up to 10% following a reassessment.
School boards across the state utilize this measure for the first time in decades, as you mentioned, due to lack of prior reassessments, which ultimately resulted in higher tax bills for a lot of residents, particularly in New Castle County, as we've been discussing. While it didn't pass during special session, there is legislation on the table that would require schools to prove an actual deficit if they wanted to increase revenues following a reassessment. Do you support implementing some variation of a burden of proof requirement for school districts?
Gov. Meyer:
We need to take a comprehensive look at how our schools are funded, making sure it's sustainable for the long term.
It's no longer acceptable in 2025 that districts in wealthier areas are able to get referendums passed, and districts in less wealthy areas are having more difficulty passing referenda, because, of course, the consequence of that is greater levels of inequality. We're gonna look hard at all that stuff, and hopefully by January come forward with something not just to address tax rates and how people are taxed to pay for their schools, but also making sure that every dollar of educational expenditure is efficient.
I think there's a problem. Let's just say like, General Benson, the Adjutant General of our National Guard, says it, let me give it to you sugar-free. Let's be honest here. In our small group, I don't know if anyone's listening, but let's be honest.
There are a lot of Delawareans who the biggest problem they have with paying their school taxes is they don't feel like they're getting a return. My experience, when I was in seventh grade for my dad's birthday, I spent months on a paper route saving up money for a $70 baseball glove. When I went to buy it, they gave me a little discount, and so I got a little cheaper.
That felt good, because I worked hard, and I earned something that was really a quality glove. Maybe 70 bucks doesn't get you much from a baseball glove now, but back then, that was a lot of money for a baseball glove. My experience, and it's true in Delaware, and I think it's true in many places in the country, people are willing to pay for something that's high quality.
I think there's a sense and a frustration we're paying all this money for schools that 10, 12, 14 of which are scoring in the single digits in proficiency. That's not acceptable, so we have to make sure not just we're taxing people the right amount, a fair amount, based on an assessment that's fair, but we have to make sure we're following the dollars and they're being expended efficiently.
Tom Byrne:
I want to talk a little bit about that some more, but first I do want to go back to something you said about referenda and referendum reform.
Do you have an idea in your mind of what referendum reform should look like? What should be done in terms of making sure, as you mentioned, that this issue of certain districts can get referendums passed and other ones can't, or they can only get it passed if they do a second version where they tell people they're going to cut everything. Do you have a sense of what you would propose to make that system work better?
Gov. Meyer
Yes.
Tom Byrne:
What is it?
Gov. Meyer:
You'll hear more, Tom.
Tom Byrne:
No hints?
Gov. Meyer:
I don't think… For anyone trying to run an organization, imagine if every 40 years, every 40 years, or every five years, or at some occurrence of a court issuing an order or a county making a decision, you suddenly could increase all your revenues 10%. And outside of that, it was really, really hard. That's not a sensible way to run any organization.
So, we're going to take a step back and look at how do we run these organizations in a way where getting revenue makes sense? Because this is not just any organization. It's just about the most important organizations in our community and in our society, and that's our schools and our kids.
Tom Byrne:
All this, referendum reform, property reassessment, are all inherently, as you've made clear, tied to the whole issue of education funding in the state.
And that is largely right now in the hands of the Public Education Funding Commission, which did offer five recommendations earlier this year to move forward, including a hybrid funding framework that blends elements of the current unit count system and a weighted block grant approach. From your perspective, ultimately, is the path forward focusing on the commission's work and moving it along as quickly as possible using what your education secretary, Cindy Marten, has called a holistic approach - rather than piecemeal legislation trying to, because a lot of people have said that kind of like the piecemeal fixing of the unit count is how we kind of got in this situation. I mean, is it better to take that holistic approach and let the commission do its work before a lot of different legislation starts coming out?
Gov. Meyer:
Understand at the outset what I'm trying to do, like at a high level.
We have a funding formula. The way our schools is funded is based on a formula that was written in the 1940s. It's the oldest formula in the country.
When I say that, I am not the first Delawarean to say that. I am not the first elected official to say that. There probably have been people sitting in this seat on this show who've been saying this, I don't know how old The Green is, but probably decades ago, you would have had people on the radio saying we need to change the funding formula.
My guess is when I was in school 30, 40 years ago, people were probably saying, hey, we need to change the funding formula. It has not changed in any substance, a little bit on the edges, but this formula needs to be changed. That's why when I came into office, I said I'll give you six months.
They came up with a framework. I think it needs to be wholesale, holistic changes. There are dramatic steps forward that I think we're gonna see by the end of the year because of some of the dynamics of reassessment, I was convinced, okay, we can wait one more year just to get it right, right? Because it's very hard to set a formula and then there's reassessment that changes all the variables. So, we're looking at by fall of 2026, but within a year, having a formula that serves Delaware as well.
Tom Byrne:
And I know your Education Secretary has said all this stuff is part of it… the referendum reform… and it will probably take some time, maybe, I think when I talked to her last, it was like a five, six-year rollout of the whole thing. Is that how you view it? There's gonna be decisions made and then there's gonna be implementation.
Gov. Meyer:
Yeah, that's accurate.
Tom Byrne:
OK
Gov. Meyer:
So, to Delawareans, I just want to assure Delawareans that I grew up in Delaware. This is a low-property tax jurisdiction state. When I look at the numbers, I look at the needs of our schools, I fundamentally believe we can still continue to be a low-property tax jurisdiction state. We can still continue to have regular reassessments that value your property accurately and we can make appropriate investments in our school to have one of the best school systems in the country.
