00:00:00 · S0, Doris Gomez, Erika Beras, Jeff Guo, Helene Landimore, Jasmine Dawson, Bob Bailey
[00:00:00] S0: Support for this podcast and the following message come from Humana. Your employees are your business's heartbeat. Humana offers dental, vision, life, and disability coverage with award winning service and modern benefits. Learn more at humana.com/employer. [00:00:18] S1: This is Planet Money from NPR. [00:00:23] S2: This summer, about a 100 people gathered in this big room in New Haven, Connecticut. They were here to change the state's future. They've been asked to fix one of Connecticut's biggest and thorniest problems, taxes. [00:00:35] S3: But the folks gathered here, they are not policy experts. They are not politicians. They are just people, and some of them are a little jittery. [00:00:46] S4: I don't know much. I'm a little nervous. [00:00:50] S2: Feeling some trepidation. [00:00:53] S5: I have no idea what this is about, and I I kinda feel, like, unprepared. I see people with, like, notepads and stuff. I didn't bring... Oh, actually, I did. I did bring my notepad. Okay. So I somewhat feel prepared. [00:01:06] S2: But also feeling super optimistic. [00:01:09] S6: I wanna make a difference for the people of Connecticut. We can't keep doing what we've always done. I wanna see if we can help find a solution. [00:01:17] S3: For the next few months, Jessica Burrick, Jasmine Dawson, Bob Bailey, and 97 other Connecticut citizens are taking part in a radical experiment in democracy. See, they have all been randomly selected to come up with a solution for Connecticut's broken property tax system.
00:01:17 · Jeff Guo, Erika Beras, Erica Blackman
[00:01:17] S3: For the next few months, Jessica Burrick, Jasmine Dawson, Bob Bailey, and 97 other Connecticut citizens are taking part in a radical experiment in democracy. See, they have all been randomly selected to come up with a solution for Connecticut's broken property tax system. [00:01:35] S2: This is like the biggest problem in Connecticut right now. It's been the biggest problem for decades, and the elected politicians just have not been able to do anything about it. So now Connecticut decided to figure it out citizen style. Bring together about a 100 citizens to come up with tax policy. Think of it like jury duty, but for taxes. [00:02:00] S3: The way this is gonna work is these regular citizens will meet regularly for a few months. They will get a crash course in civics, in property taxes, school funding, and learn what it takes for a 100 random strangers to get past their differences and reach a consensus. The hope is by the end, they will give a proposal to the state legislature, some new way perhaps of doing taxes. [00:02:25] S2: Today is the very first day these 100 citizens are all meeting. Hence, the nervous energy. First day at a new school vibes. Citizen Erica Blackman describes what it's like. [00:02:37] S7: Everyone's talking. I can barely hear myself. The countdown clock just started, building that anticipation and anxiety, good anxiety. It's giving me chills. [00:02:53] S2: Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Behrs.
00:02:53 · Erika Beras, Jeff Guo
[00:02:53] S2: Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Behrs. [00:02:56] S3: And I'm Jeff Guo. Over the past few months, we have been following these randomly selected people in Connecticut in this unusual experiment to see if they can fix one of the most important issues state governments face, how to fund their schools and roads and emergency services. [00:03:13] S2: Today on the show, can a random bunch of citizens work together to fix property taxes, avert a future budget crisis, and maybe reinvent democracy?
00:03:13 · Erika Beras, S0, Jeff Guo, Bob Bailey
[00:03:13] S2: Today on the show, can a random bunch of citizens work together to fix property taxes, avert a future budget crisis, and maybe reinvent democracy? [00:03:32] S0: Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from BUILT. Rent and mortgages keep getting more expensive. That's why BUILT created three credit cards designed to offer rich rewards on everything you spend on. You can earn up to 1.25x points on every housing payment with no transaction fee, which can be redeemed for flights, hotels, a future housing payment, and more. Apply at joinbilt.commoney. Terms apply, subject to approval and eligibility. Billed cards are issued by column NA, member FDIC, pursuant to license from MasterCard International Incorporated. Support comes from our twenty twenty six lead sponsor of planet money, Amazon Business. Unlock smart business buying with a fast free delivery on millions of items and practical AI innovations that automate repetitive tasks so you can make smarter decisions faster. Learn more at Amazon Business dot com. This message comes from Insperity because how you HR matters. From payroll and benefits to HR compliance and talent development, helping your business move forward with confidence. Learn more at insperity.com/hr matters. [00:04:45] S3: On the day that those 100 random Connecticut citizens met in a room for the first time, they also met the organizers who had brought them there. One of them was Sean Scanlon, who gave him a little speech to get things started. [00:04:57] S6: Morning, everybody.
00:04:57 · Bob Bailey, Erika Beras, Sean Scanlon, Sean Scanlon, Jeff Guo
[00:04:57] S6: Morning, everybody. [00:04:59] S2: Sean is the state's comptroller. [00:05:01] S8: I have never been more excited in my ten years of being elected office in the state than to see what you come up with. [00:05:09] S2: You'll hear He's basically in charge of oversight for the state budget. He's seen Connecticut struggle with this property tax problem for years. It was a huge problem when he was first elected as a state representative back in 2014. [00:05:23] S9: I'm like, so excited to change the world. I meet with the speaker of the house and I said, mister speaker, I'm here. I've got this whole notebook of things I wanna do, and the first thing on it is I wanna solve the property tax crisis [00:05:33] S8: in the state of Connecticut. [00:05:35] S9: And he laughed at [00:05:36] S8: me. And he [00:05:38] S9: gave me a proverbial pat on the shoulder [00:05:39] S8: and said, kid, we're in the middle [00:05:41] S9: of a fiscal crisis. There's a lot of challenges. And just so you know, that's like the third rail of politics, [00:05:46] S8: and nobody's ever gonna figure that out. It's just the way it is. [00:05:49] S3: Yeah. Sean told us that obviously, he was not the first person to realize that property taxes in Connecticut needed a revamp. [00:05:56] S2: How long have people been saying, wait. This system is broken? [00:05:59] S8: I'd say probably seventy years. Right? I mean Seventy years?
00:05:59 · Sean Scanlon, Erika Beras, Jeff Guo
[00:05:59] S8: I'd say probably seventy years. Right? I mean Seventy years? [00:06:04] S2: It's a long time. Here is a problem with taxes in Connecticut. The people in Connecticut pay some of the highest property taxes in the country. In some towns, the tax bill for a middle class family home can come out to twenty to thirty thousand dollars per year. [00:06:18] S3: And that's because towns and cities here need that money to pay for their own local schools, their own local police, their own local water services. In Connecticut, the state doesn't chip in as much as in other states. So when towns and cities don't have enough money to pay for schools and police and all that stuff, they increase property taxes. Property taxes all over the state have been going up and up and up. [00:06:43] S2: Now a lot of people have tried to rethink the whole tax system in Connecticut. [00:06:47] S8: Every few years, somebody like me comes along, and what happens is they write a report. That report gets a couple days of press, and then it collects dust on a shelf. [00:06:57] S3: Yeah. Sean says every plan always runs into the same problem. Because to fix this issue, politicians might have to make hard choices, raise taxes or cut spending. But which taxes? What spending? Their choices would almost certainly make some voters mad.