To the editor:

I had intended my original letter to be my first and last word on the subject of the proposed demolition of the senior tax exemption. But in the meantime, the town has attempted to defend the indefensible, by offering new rationalizations for the proposal, some of which are demonstrably false and others seriously misleading. 

The town claims that "all of Barrington's senior tax exemptions are income based, and have been for years." That is flat-out wrong, as a matter of law. 

The senior tax exemption is contained in Barrington Code Chapter 169, Article II. Section 169-9 is entitled "Amount of Exemption." It has 2 parts: a set of 4-step so-called "circuit-breaker" exemption categories, based on income amounts between $16,000 and $28,000 per year, and a separate so-called "flat" exemption for which there is no income limitation at all for obtaining the smallest senior exemption, which is $18,400 (representing an actual tax break of $368 currently). 

Only the 4 circuit-breaker ones are based on income. Every Barrington senior homeowner is automatically entitled to the $368 credit under the flat exemption, without any income limitations and therefore without the need to disclose any financial information whatsoever. And someone who may be eligible for a larger, circuit-breaker exemption but doesn't want to disclose his or her tax return is entitled to the $368 exemption, no questions asked. 

So that is why, apparently for decades, the town has never sought financial disclosure for the $368 exemption — because it has no legal right to that information.

Therefore it should come as no surprise that when the R.I. Department of Revenue prepared and sent to all cities and towns its most recent comprehensive report on local tax exemptions, dated Oct. 2016, this is what it reported about the $368 senior exemption in Barrington: "Flat Exemption — Amount $18,400 - Income Requirements: "None". That report itself states that it is "the result of a survey of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns ... with the cooperation of local tax assessors." Similar reports were prepared and published in prior years, and they too report that the Barrington tax assessor advised that Barrington has no income requirement for the flat tax exemption. 

One must wonder why the town has not shared with the rest of us in Barrington the tax assessor's repeated commitment that there is no income limitation on the flat exemption, and therefore no need for any financial disclosure in order to obtain it. And even more proof of this point lies in the Barrington senior exemption application form, which for years has featured prominently the following statement: 

"This application provides an exemption from taxation of $18,400 of a qualifying residential property value for a resident who maintains a permanent place of abode in the Town of Barrington for an aggregate of more than 183 days in any calendar year. If an applicant's income is $28,000 or less they may want to consider filing for a "Circuit Breaker Exemption, which provides a greater tax deduction depending on income."

The tax assessor and town solicitor have approved that same instruction for years. Lastly, as recently as March 2017, the tax assessor presented a formal report to the council that the flat exemption was the "basic elderly exemption, no income verification"! 

So much for the town's new-found "interpretation" to the contrary. But a more disturbing question remains unanswered: why is the town pretending that none of this history happened, and deciding to break the law by violating the exemption ordinance?

Let there be no doubt that the town is trying to silently eliminate the longstanding flat exemption for all seniors, in direct violation of Section 169-9, all the while pretending that nothing has changed. Meanwhile, the town is correctly granting other exemptions without supporting financial information, perhaps because it thinks that seniors are wimps and not as likely to generate a "political hot potato" as if the town eliminated the similarly non-income-based exemptions for veterans and the disabled.  

Can the town spell "F-I-A-S-C-O"?

Matt Medeiros

Barrington