The executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island is asking Barrington officials to reconsider the new senior tax exemption.

The ACLU's Steven Brown sent a letter to the town's tax assessor on Thursday, Oct. 26, stating that the town had made no substantial change to the existing tax exemption ordinance and therefore should not be requesting confidential tax information from residents who only aim to receive the flat rate tax exemption.

"We see no basis for imposing this new disclosure requirement on individuals…" Mr. Brown wrote in the letter. "…those who qualify for the low flat tax exemption under existing law should be able to apply under the same circumstances they have in the past since the law itself has not changed. 

"They should not be faced with the unwarranted choice of foregoing the tax exemption completely or submitting private information they have never had to provide before."

The town council decided earlier this year to alter the senior tax exemption in an effort to provide more financial assistance to residents in need. The council formed an ad hoc tax exemption committee which investigated a number of options and settled on building an income-based senior tax exemption.

In the past, the town has offered a circuit breaker exemption for residents earning less than $28,000 each year. For all residents 65 and older who earned more than $28,000 each year, there was a flat rate senior exemption; last year the senior exemption offered older residents a $368 reduction on their property tax bill, regardless of how much money they earned. The new senior tax exemption will be income-based, and in order to establish how much money residents can save on their tax bills, officials are calling for income information.

Mr. Brown contends that the flat rate exemption should remain for all residents who had earlier qualified, unless officials make further significant changes to the ordinance.

"…all that the town council has done thus far is change the date (twice) for applying for a senior citizen exemption, flat rate or otherwise," Mr. Brown wrote. 

Some officials may contend that the ordinance has always allowed for the town to request income information from people applying for both the circuit breaker and flat rate exemptions. 

Mr. Brown countered, stating that the town has, in prior years, only asked for income data for those applying for the circuit breaker exemption. 

Requesting income information from all those applying for the flat rate exemption "… is unnecessary and represents a completely arbitrary invasion of these homeowners' privacy," Mr. Brown wrote.

He later continued: "the town is requiring higher-income homeowners to provide this sensitive information for the first time in order to qualify for a tax exemption that has not yet been discussed, determined or approved. This, we submit, is inappropriate."

The letter from the ACLU also discusses residents' concerns about the security of their personal information.

"Fears of hacking or other malicious, or even unintentional, disclosures of the data are legitimate and real," Mr. Brown wrote. "When it comes to such private information, municipalities — which are unlikely to have truly robust security measures, electronic or otherwise, in place — should err on the side of collecting less data, not more."

Toward the conclusion of his letter, Mr. Brown writes that while the town government is saddled with making important fiscal decisions, that "responsibility should not give public agencies the unbridled authority to demand otherwise private information from its citizens in order to make more informed decisions."

The town has set a Dec. 1 deadline for people to apply for the senior tax exemption.