School millage rates: some up, some down, says GSU

At an Urban Institute conference in late May on the effects of the housing crisis on state and local governments, James Alm and David Sjoquist from Georgia State University gave a presentation entitled “Rethinking Local Government Reliance on the Property Tax.”

Alm & Sjoquist look at national property tax trends for the first half of their slides, but then focus on Georgia as a case study. One of their observations (on slide #22 of their presentation) is this table showing that declining property values have not caused an increase in the number of Georgia school districts increasing their millage rates:

However, it looks to me like an increasing number of school districts are no longer lowering their millage rates.

Their full PowerPoint presentation is available here.