State legislators should read this USA Today story before voting to raise taxes, which is simply makes it more costly to live. Local governments are now seeing growth in the number of people who are failing to pay their property taxes. Could this be the next trend in North Carolina, where the unemployment rate stands at 11 percent and is predicted to rise to 13 percent in 2010?

At a time when the nation’s housing crisis has put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes through bank foreclosure, a growing pile of unpaid bills has put tens of thousands more in danger of losing them to tax seizures. That has caused multimillion-dollar shortfalls for some already-struggling local governments that rely on property taxes to pay for everything from schools to police.

Because property taxes are almost always collected locally, there is no single national measure of just how many people have fallen behind. But tax collectors and treasures in communities across the country say they’ve seen a sharp jump in the number of delinquent homeowners and businesses as the nation’s unemployment rate grew. They’re bracing for even more unpaid bills ahead.