Mar. 23--The tax cap proposition on the April 7 city election ballot has won the backing of the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce.

In a press release Monday morning, the chamber board said Proposition 9 would restore the cap's original calculation formula and be fairer to property owners and business people.

The initiative reached the ballot behind about 13,000 signatures on petitions circulated by a group called the Municipal Taxpayers' League.

If voters approve the proposition, it would move payments made to the city's general government fund by city-owned utilities and enterprises like the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility and Merrill Field into the pool of money that is used each year to calculate how much property taxes can increase.

Right now, those payments -- called MUSA and MESA -- amount to about $16 million annually. Sponsors of the petitions say putting them back into the tax cap calculations would reduce the amount of taxes the city is allowed to charge property owners in the short run, and reduce the amount of increase in the long run.

The switch would be made gradually, over a three-year period.

Opponents, citing a study commissioned by Acting Mayor Matt Claman, say the proposition could actually result in increased taxes on property owners, especially if the amounts of the MUSA and MESA payments drop for some reason. That could happen if the water and wastewater utility lose a lawsuit over a rate increase that is presently before the state Supreme Court.

The MUSA and MESA payments were included in the tax cap formula until 2003, when former Mayor Mark Begich and a unanimous Assembly moved them out. At the time, that caused the tax cap to drop. But in the years since, property taxes have increased steadily.

In the press release, Chamber board chairman Phil Okeson says the removal of the MUSA and MESA payments "have weakened the tax cap's intended stability for residential and business property owners." Last week, a citizens advisory commission that reviews the city budget issues recommended that the taxpayers league withdraw the proposition and rewrite it, saying its language is ambiguous and confusing, and that it may not accomplish the ends its authors intended.

That isn't possible, however. The ballots have been printed.

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Contact reporter Don Hunter at dhunter@adn.com or 257-4349.

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