Tax rebate or campaign reboot?

Politicians giveth, and they taketh away, and sometimes you have to watch their hands to know whether they are taking away even when they say they are giving you something.

The latest case in point is the $100 million property tax rebate that Democratic candidate Steve Bullock says he will deliver to Montana if he is elected governor.

Bullock, the state’s attorney general, said at a Helena press conference that, “This job-creating rebate is a responsible approach that will return money to Montana taxpayers and help small businesses create jobs, all without creating Washington, D.C.-style budget deficits.”

Well, we are in favor of creating jobs, too, which makes us wonder how the $400 per homeowner rebate is going to accomplish that. Bullock blithely said, “If you’re an average Montana family and receive a $400 check, you’re going to take the kids out to dinner, put a down payment on a snowmobile, maybe buy some fencing.”

All of those are possible, but none of them are likely to create jobs, and in our estimation it is more likely that the average Montana family will spend its extra $400 paying down a credit card or just paying the monthly bills — maybe buy some $3.80 a gallon gas.

It also occurs to us that if the state is collecting more money than it needs from property taxes, maybe they should just lower the property taxes.

Bullock’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Rick Hill, called the rebate a “one-time gimmick,” but actually it is at least a two-time gimmick.

After all, Bullock comes right out and admits that his rebate program is based on the 2007 rebate that Gov. Brian Schweitzer convinced the Legislature to enact back then. Well, we homeowners got our $400 rebate, and sure enough we cashed the check, but we don’t remember any new jobs starting up as a result, though we do remember the governor being re-elected.

As we noted in 2009, the 2007 rebate “was a nice gesture, but it wasn’t a solution” to Montana’s property tax woes. “It was just a way to buy time.”

Maybe we should have added that it was a pretty good way to buy votes as well.