By Elaine S. Povich, Stateline.org

No state illustrates this year’s flurry of ballot measures to cut property taxes better than Colorado. There, the results of two likely voter questions could reduce funding for schools, roads, emergency responders and other local government services.

Colorado’s ballot measures are just two of nearly a dozen upcoming questions dealing with property taxes in states across the country, including in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming. While varying in scope, the measures all aim to reduce taxes for some or all property owners.

One Colorado question is already certified for the ballot, and another appears to have many more signatures than necessary to qualify. (A third Colorado property tax ballot question, which is less controversial than the others and has qualified for the ballot, would expand the amount of tax exclusion that can be claimed by disabled veterans.)

“Property taxes are a deeply unpopular, but a fairly efficient, tax,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a conservative tax analysis group that advocates for lower, more broadly based taxes. “So they have always pitted economists and policy wonks against ordinary homeowners who get very frustrated with their property taxes.”

Property taxes are generally assessed at the local level, and the money raised helps pay for schools, public safety, fire response and roads. The ballot measures being considered across the country could have significant effects on the money raised by those taxes — which could mean cuts in services or pressure on state lawmakers to make up the difference.

Local governments periodically assess the value of property and then set tax rates based on those assessments. Nationwide, home market values have increased about 50% since August 2019, according to Zillow, the real estate data company.

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“(Many homeowners) are paying dramatically more for the same property, and they don’t feel they are getting better government,” Walczak said. “That’s driving the discontent that is showing up in ballot measures and pressure on state lawmakers to provide relief.”

Experts say that because property taxes often are paid in a large lump a couple or so times a year — as opposed to income taxes or sales taxes, which are paid in dribbles — they tend to leave a bigger impression on taxpayers.

In Colorado, one ballot initiative would cap annual state property tax revenue growth from residential and commercial properties at 4%.

Another, which also is expected to qualify for November’s ballot, would cut residential and commercial property tax assessment rates. Since that reduction would bring in fewer dollars, that initiative, if passed, would require the state to reimburse local governments for the revenue losses — an expected $3 billion.

In May, the Colorado Legislature passed a bill to lower property assessment rates, in a hard-fought $1.3 billion compromise. The new law includes short-term assessment rate cuts and long-term structural changes to the property tax code, and it prioritizes school funding over other government services. The law also caps revenue growth from property taxes at 5.5%.

But conservative groups wanted more, and they worked to get stricter property tax limits onto November’s ballot.

“The bill that passed was a good start,” said Sean Duffy, spokesperson for Advance Colorado, a conservative advocacy group and main proponent of the initiatives.

“But many Republicans and many taxpayers and people around the state were thinking it would be really important to do a more significant and permanent cut,” Duffy said.

The other organization backing the referendums is Colorado Concern, a conservative group begun by Larry Mizel, who founded one of the nation’s largest homebuilding companies and has been a key fundraiser for former President Donald Trump.

Duffy said voters still have concerns about property taxes despite the Legislature’s action.

“Home values in Colorado have gone up like a hockey stick,” Duffy said, a trend mirrored in many other states. “It’s not, ‘I don’t want to pay for my schools or fire department,’ it was just a huge bucket of water in the face.”

But Colorado Democratic state Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, who co-sponsored the bill that became law, said the ballot initiatives would go too far.

He said the proposed 4% increase cap on property tax revenue wouldn’t allow for inflation or regional variation — or new construction, which tends to reduce individual property within a jurisdiction.

DeGruy Kennedy, who is term-limited, this summer became president of the Bell Policy Center, a left-leaning research and advocacy nonprofit that backs upward mobility for middle- and lower-income individuals.

Florida, too, has a ballot measure that could save homeowners money while cutting local tax revenues. The initiative would allow an annual inflation adjustment to the homestead exemption for people whose properties are their primary residence. It’s backed by a group of Republican legislators but opposed by the state’s League of Cities.

In Arizona, a property tax ballot measure has more to do with the hot-button issues of homelessness and vagrancy, said Ryan Byrne, managing editor of the ballot measure project at Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that tracks every candidate and referendum across the country.

If approved, the measure would allow property owners to apply for a property tax refund if the municipality does not enforce laws against illegal camping, loitering, panhandling, public urination, public consumption of alcohol and possession of illegal substances. It was referred to the ballot by the Legislature on split votes, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The League of Cities also opposes this measure.

In North Dakota, former Republican state Rep. Rick Becker is leading a referendum drive to eliminate property taxes altogether.

“Do you really own your property if the government can take it away?” he said, referring to cases in which people who don’t pay their taxes might have their homes foreclosed upon.

“In North Dakota, not unlike many other states, people hate property taxes,” he said. He argued the Legislature has lots of other pots of money from which to replace the revenue.

A nonpartisan legislative research agency estimated that ditching the property tax in North Dakota would cost the state $1.3 billion per year.

Georgia’s ballot measure would allow localities to create a homestead exemption for homeowners whose property is their primary residence.

New Mexico’s and Virginia’s measures would extend more property tax breaks to veterans.

Wyoming’s ballot initiative would set up a new class of property for taxation, putting owner-occupied dwellings in a separate category from rental property.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Swati Pandey, Randy Thanthong-Knight and Alice Kantor, Bloomberg News

International students — long the golden goose for universities and colleges in advanced economies — face an increasingly uncertain future as governments seek easy targets to rein in surging immigration.

In the United Kingdom, one of the world’s biggest destinations for foreign students, the Labour Party while in opposition vowed to retain a ban on international students bringing dependents to Britain — the largest source of migration since 2019. In the Netherlands, a far-right coalition has proposed restricting foreign students’ access to Dutch universities.

In Canada, where one in 40 people is an international student, a government clampdown is forcing “puppy mill” colleges to shut down programs. And in Australia, where that ratio is even greater at one in 33, the government has proposed caps on foreign enrollments in universities and is targeting “dodgy providers.”

The impact is already being felt — aggregate visa data for the first quarter of 2024 showed volumes to the UK, Canada and Australia down between 20% and 30% from a year earlier, according to Sydney-listed student placement services and testing company IDP Education Ltd., which operates in all three markets.

“Students are the easiest group to control in terms of numbers, that’s why they’re No. 1 on the chopping list and universities aren’t particularly powerful constituencies so they’re probably also a reasonable political target,” said Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party last month ended 14 years of Conservative rule in the UK and hasn’t settled on its immigration policy since the July election landslide. Canada and Australia have elections due in the coming 14 months.

Governments are framing the moves as a way to improve the quality of education and stamp out rorting. But critics of the measures say they’re also politically motivated as a cost-of-living squeeze and housing shortages since the COVID pandemic sparks a backlash against rapid immigration rates.

International education is a roughly $200 billion global business, according to data company Holon IQ, with the UK, Canada and Australia three of its biggest players. The industry is considered a services export and generates economic benefits beyond tuition fees as students fork out for accommodation and living expenses and often go on to work and pay taxes in the countries they studied.

The United States is shaping up as winner from the crackdown in other markets. It surpassed Australia to become the preferred study destination for international students, according to an IDP survey of more than 11,500 prospective and current international students.

International student enrollments in the U.S. rose 11.5% in 2022-23 from the year prior, taking the total to more than 1 million for the first time since the pandemic. Vying to return to the presidency, Donald Trump has said he supports giving a green card to every noncitizen graduate of a U.S. college, though his campaign later said the program would include a strict vetting process.

But elsewhere, economic arguments about the benefits of a booming international education sector are taking a back seat to political ones as the electoral tide swings against immigration.

UK closes a ‘gateway’

Measures by the former government to ensure the sector is used for education and “not as a gateway to immigration” are being reviewed by the new Labour government.

During the campaign, Labour shadow minister Chris Bryant assured that the party — if elected — wouldn’t reverse a ban on foreign students bringing dependents to the country. But more recently, UK Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson asserted that “for too long international students have been treated as political footballs, not valued guests,” and that this will stop. “Be in no doubt: International students are welcome in the UK,” she declared.

The UK has seen a growing number of foreign students in the past decade, especially from China and India, with the academic year of 2021-22 showing a record 679,970 overseas students.

That’s contributed significantly to universities’ funding, making them increasingly reliant on Chinese-British diplomatic relations and on Indian economic growth. The total economic benefit of the 2021-22 cohort was estimated to be 41.9 billion pounds ($53.5 billion), according to an independent study.

The Office for Students, the sector’s independent regulator, said even a small reduction in student numbers could push 202 institutions, or 74% of the total, into deficit. A review was commissioned by the former government to study visa abuse by foreign students, but found little evidence of it.

Companies have also stressed the need for foreign talent. Executives at Anglo American Plc, Rio Tinto Plc and Siemens AG were among signatories to a letter warning the previous Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that Britain’s migration policies may weaken the university sector. UK universities have stressed that international enrollment doesn’t come at the expense of domestic students.

Dutch restrictions

While across Europe anti-foreign sentiment keeps rising, limitations on foreign students are perhaps nowhere more striking than in the Netherlands, where a far-right coalition has pushed a policy to restrict foreign students’ access to Dutch universities.

Dutch universities were famously favorable to foreign students, with most classes offered in English and foreign students making up a quarter of the higher education student body. But a lack of new housing and the tripling of foreign student numbers in the past decade have contributed to a serious shortfall in student accommodation.

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Universities facing overcapacity decided in February to limit the number of English-taught degrees and reduce international enrollment.

The universities’ decision is supported by a bill, currently under discussion in parliament, to cap the number of foreign students in the country, restrict non-European students from certain programs and forbid active international recruitment at student fairs except for sectors with significant labor shortages.

Large Dutch companies, which rely heavily on skilled foreign talent, have raised alarm bells about these restrictions, saying they might move their offices out of the country if a number of these anti-migrant policies pass.

The nation’s central bank chief also warned that foreign students contribute significantly to the Dutch economy. Non-EU students, for example, contribute up to 96,000 euros ($105,000) each to the Dutch economy over the course of their studies, according to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

Canada’s crackdown

In Canada, foreign students contribute more than C$22 billion ($16 billion) to the economy and support some 218,000 jobs.

New regulations — including a 35% reduction in student visa issuance this year and removal of incentives like the postgraduation work permit eligibility — are targeted at the subsector predominantly occupied by lesser-known, smaller colleges.

Munira Mistry, 43, fears losing her teaching job at a college in Toronto by December as the government clampdown prompts a cost-cutting drive.

“It feels like all the doors are closing,” said Mistry, a project management instructor who arrived as an international student from India in 2020 and is still struggling to gain permanent residency. “I’m back to square one.”

At the end of last year and before the crackdown took effect, 10 small institutions had more international study permit holders than the University of Toronto, the country’s highest ranking institution.

Like in Australia and the UK, rents surged and reports of students cramming into apartments or using food banks to get by became commonplace. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he would tie the pace of population growth to home construction, which could result in an even larger drop in international student entries and overall immigration levels.

Colleges Ontario, an association representing the province’s 24 public colleges, said it experienced a “collapse” of the spring cohort, which represents a quarter of total college enrollment. It expects a “severe impact” on the fall term, with revenue losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“No organization can absorb such losses without significant cuts to operations,” it said in a statement in March, adding that the consequences include “immediate program suspensions and a pause on capital investments.”

Australia acts

The stakes are even higher for Australia, where international students contributed A$48 billion ($31.6 billion) to the economy in 2023, becoming the country’s top services export. Roughly 55% of that amount is spent on goods and services outside universities — with significant benefits for local small businesses, according to policy think tank Committee for Sydney.

Australia’s universities rely on international students for more than a quarter of overall operating revenue, according to S&P Global Ratings, making them among the most dependent in the world.

The government’s plans — which include enrollment limits for individual universities and housing construction requirements — haven’t been through parliament yet. But international students are already facing tougher English language standards, visa rejections are becoming more common and some private colleges are being told to stop recruiting fake overseas students within six months or they’ll lose their licenses.

International student visa application fees in July more than doubled to A$1,600, the most expensive in the world, according to Group of Eight Universities, which represents the country’s leading research universities.

Australia’s plan risks crimping universities’ revenues, curbing funding for research and potentially hurting their international QS World University Rankings. Business lobbies say the move will leave a shortfall of workers in key industries.

Insolvencies in Australia’s education and training sector have already responded, jumping nearly 90% in June from a year earlier — the highest for any sector — according to data from Creditorwatch Pty Ltd., with the rate expected to increase in the next 12 months.

Australia’s opposition has promised even stricter limits, without specifying its policy proposals. Australian voters are due to go to the polls by May 2025 with sentiment swinging against rapid immigration — a survey in May showed 66% of respondents said 2023’s migrant intake “was too high” with 50% wanting the government to make deeper cuts to immigration.

A parliamentary inquiry into the proposed legislation is due to report back this month. Given the proposed legislation has bipartisan support, analysts expect it to pass parliament this year, though universities might yet be able to persuade the government to water down some proposals.

“Migration is shaping up as a key battlefront in the lead-up to the federal election and the university sector is shaping up to be the fall guy,” Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight, said in her opening statement to a parliamentary hearing reviewing the proposed legislation on Aug. 6. “This rushed and poorly framed legislation is a classic example of retrofitting policy to suit dubious politics.”

With assistance from Ben Westcott, Carmeli Argana and Helen Yuan.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Architect Michael McGuire, known as an apostle of Frank Lloyd Wright, believed that buildings should be designed to fit their sites, whether steep slopes or prairie or downtown city blocks.

Among his notable projects in and around Stillwater: the Dock Café, a former car wash that McGuire transformed into a restaurant with views of the St. Croix River; the Brick Alley building, a former Northern States Power substation that McGuire converted into a space for shops, artists and craftspeople; and the Commander Grain Elevator, a 1898 building that McGuire saved from demolition and recast as his office and studio and a retail space that featured an indoor rock-climbing wall.

McGuire died Aug. 4 after a brief illness at his home, which he designed in 1962 overlooking the St. Croix River in the Town of St. Joseph, Wis. He was 95.

Architect Rosemary McMonigal, a longtime colleague, called McGuire “the most influential architect in the St. Croix Valley.”

Architect Mike McGuire died Aug. 4, 2024, after a brief illness at his home, which he designed in 1962, overlooking the St. Croix River in the Town of St. Joseph, Wis. He was 95. (Courtesy of Sally McGuire-Huth)

The Eastbank townhouses in North Hudson, Wis., McMonigal’s favorite McGuire project, were built in the mid-1980s. “The open living plans were forward-thinking for the time period, with natural light throughout,” McMonigal said. “The vaulted ceilings give some volume, and the low slope keeps it comfortable. Light and views were special to Mike, and his buildings are a joy to be in, with windows wrapping corners and decks that connect inside and outside. All of his projects had phenomenal attention to detail.”

McGuire also designed the Desch Office Building in downtown Stillwater, the Wild River State Park Visitor Center in Center City, and the St. Croix River Watershed Research Station in May Township.

But McGuire’s highest talent was residential design, said Kelly Davis, a retired architect who worked with McGuire for two decades at McGuire/Engler/Davis Architects in Stillwater.

“They were the perfect reflection of the man – of Mike and his beliefs, his outlook on the world,” Davis said. “No matter if the houses were grand or modest, they were humble. They avoided ostentation. They were honest. They had integrity of natural materials, and they were highly respectful of land. Mike always felt that his best buildings were the ones that could barely be glimpsed through the vegetation. He felt that architecture should be subservient to the natural landscape, rather than dominant.”

Prairie School design

McGuire specialized in Prairie School design, the architectural style pioneered by Wright, and designed many private residences in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, California and Hawaii. He knew how to employ “architecture to blur the line between man and nature,” according to a profile on McGuire published in Mother Earth Living: “He’s a master at expressing Wright’s concept of ‘continuous space,’ an idea that espouses that the inside and outside of a home are coherent, seamless, one.”

McGuire was often involved in projects at the earliest stage, even going so far as to help clients decide on a piece of land, said John McGuire, his son. “His idea was not to design a house and put it on a piece of land,” he said. “His idea was to design the house to the piece of land.”

McGuire, an accomplished painter, “approached architecture as an artist,” said daughter Sally McGuire-Huth. “He had this uncompromising ideal about how important beauty is – that it’s as important as almost anything else. To do anything less than what is beautiful is just really unacceptable. In Stillwater, he fought for years to do what he thought was beautiful work.”

McGuire almost single-handedly spurred Stillwater’s push for historic preservation, said Brent Peterson, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society, who called the Commander Grain Elevator “one of the great symbols of architectural reuse in the city.”

“He changed the thinking around historic buildings – from demolition to reuse,” Peterson said. “His work in that area marked the turnaround in Stillwater to thinking more about preservation of the historic character of our community.”

Studied art in Chicago, architecture in Minneapolis

McGuire grew up in Mankato and St. Cloud and studied art at the University of Chicago. “The story goes that he was studying art there, and one day one of his professors pulled him aside and said, ‘Mike, I think you should look for a profession you can make a living at,’” John McGuire said.

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McGuire returned to Minnesota to study architecture at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture, graduating in 1954. He served in the U.S. Army in Germany, and then moved to New York City, “where he threw himself into the vibrant 1950s art and music scenes – cementing his lifelong love of folk, blues, and jazz,” according to his obituary.

In New York, he reconnected with Juliann Halvorson, whom he had met while studying at the University of Minnesota. The couple married in 1957 in Tuxedo, N.Y., and then moved back to Minnesota; they divorced in 2001. They had three children.

McGuire was working for an architecture firm in St. Paul when he got a commission in 1959 to design a house for Sue Warren, who worked in the same office, McGuire-Huth said. That house, an A-frame structure in Houlton, Wis., overlooking the St. Croix River, “got a lot of attention,” she said. “It was featured in House Beautiful. That kind of put him on the map.”

McGuire started looking for a nearby property where he could design and build a house for his growing family. “He bought the property just down the street and then started designing the house he moved us into in 1962,” McGuire-Huth said.

Started his own firm

McGuire, who helped design many of the Pemtom townhouse developments around the metro area and several houses in the University Grove neighborhood in Falcon Heights, started his own architectural firm in Stillwater, which later became McGuire/Engler/Davis Architects. It was initially located in the old Joseph Wolf Brewery building on Main Street, now the Lora Hotel, and later moved across the street to the Brick Alley Building.

The Brick Alley building in downtown Stillwater on July 25, 2020. (Nancy Ngo / Pioneer Press)

Davis said he decided he wanted to work for McGuire when he was a student at Stillwater High School and took a tour of the Warren House.

“It was radically different from any other house I had experienced,” Davis said. “It was built of stone and redwood and glass, and it had a glass skylight that ran from one side of the roof to the other. I walked into this very comforting, very nurturing living space, and it literally took my breath away. This was the first house that showed me what the power of architecture could be. It made me feel like I was being held in the palm of somebody’s hand.”

McGuire never sought the limelight or bragged about his projects, Davis said. “You had to pry information from him about his own work,” he said. “He was a very humble man.”

Davis once asked McGuire what he thought his best building was, and McGuire “didn’t hesitate to answer,” he said. “He said, ‘It’s my own house.’ I think as an architect that is often true because you are the architect, but at the same time you are the client. You are providing a shelter for your family, a home that should embody your ideals. It should affect the way you feel when you get up in the morning and go to bed at night. It should be nurturing and comforting, and, in my mind, Mike’s house is a supreme example of that.”

Experimented with design

McGuire wasn’t afraid to experiment with design, John McGuire said. His father designed the Clark-Nelson House in River Falls, Wis., nicknamed the “Hobbit House,” a bermed, earth-sheltered house, and the Noel Bennett House in Jemez Springs, N.M., which was made out of straw bales.

The Bennett House was featured on the cover of “Living Homes: Sustainable Architecture and Design,” a book written by Suzi Moore McGregor and Nora Burba Trulsson and published in 2001.

The book details how Bennett and her late husband decided to hire McGuire. “It wasn’t long before they realized that architect Michael McGuire would be the best choice for creating the sustainable, energy-efficient, minimum-impact home they desired,” the authors write. “Of all the architects they had met during the research, McGuire was most well-versed in building in wild places. During the course of his career, he had built State Park buildings, an environmental research center, and buildings for a wilderness camp, and had experimented with passive and active solar systems and new materials since the 1960s.”

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McGuire’s plan for the house followed “hemicycle designs” favored by Wright, “an early proponent of solar architectural strategies, and one of McGuire’s major influences,” according to the book. “Particularly in the winter, the sun warms the concrete floors in the master bedroom first, then moves through the gallery until it reaches the living quarters towards the end of the day.”

The last house McGuire designed was in Inverness, Calif., near Point Reyes National Seashore, and completed in the mid-2000s, when he was around 80, McGuire-Huth said. But McGuire continued working as an architect until he was 93, finishing a second apartment in the Commander Grain Elevator in 2022, she said.

McGuire is survived by his children, Sally McGuire-Huth, John McGuire and Kate McGuire, and four grandchildren.

A celebration of McGuire’s life will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 25 at Bradshaw Funeral Home in Stillwater.