I  know, I know. Since my last name is not Rockefeller, I should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

After all, $170 is nothing to sneeze at. Anyone out there who wants to send me $170 or $10, I'll gladly take it. And thank you for thinking of me.

That said, however, I don't tingle all over because the state might send me $170 -- I say "might" because there are all sorts of qualifiers and variables that will be used to determine who gets how much -- as my share of the state's gambling revenue next year.

You might recall that slot machines and slots parlors were legalized in this state in 2004. The promise back then was that profits -- well, some of the profits -- would be used to provide property-tax relief for home owners and farm owners throughout Pennsylvania.

Well, it's finally time for the state to begin writing some checks. About 3 million home and farm owners will receive a payment equal to about 10 percent of their property tax bill. Throughout the state, that will average about $170.

In my own case, it'll be closer to $100 than $170. I live in the West York Area School District.

A hundred dollars isn't anything to sneeze at, either. So I'll cash the check, and I'll spend the money.

But I'm not jumping up and down for joy, either.

And neither will most folks.

Because the truth of the matter is that my property taxes have increased several hundred dollars a year since 2004. And before I receive the first check, they'll go up another

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$100 or more.

Undoubtedly, there will be some York County homeowners who will do better than me. But even they will have to admit that property-tax relief from slots is, at best, a Band-Aid covering a mortal wound to the jugular vein.

Because the way things have always worked and continue to work today, property-tax relief doesn't truly correct the problem, which is that there are no controls on the spending habits of school districts.

There are no provisions in the slots law or any other law that would require school districts to truly limit their tax increases from one year to the next to the rate of inflation. No excuses and no exceptions allowed.

In fact, Act 1 included so many loopholes and exclusions that nearly every York County school district has enacted tax increases that exceeded the inflation-based indexes, above which taxpayers were supposed to have a vote.

But that vote hasn't happened in York County. Not once.

So the tax increases each year are double or triple the rate of inflation, exceeding by a lot whatever small amount of relief taxpayers will receive from slots gambling.

Are the slots rebates better than nothing? Well, sure they are. But not by much. Will the rebates improve as we get closer to the $1 billion in slots revenues predicted for 2012? Well, geez, I hope so.

But the point is that whatever annual reimbursement we're supposed to be getting in 2012, it'll be wiped out by annual tax increases. Or nearly so.

What kind of property-tax relief is that?

And don't forget, there are thousands of York countians who won't be getting a slots reimbursement at all, because they didn't sign up or didn't qualify. So they get no relief.

Until lawmakers find the guts to control spending by school districts -- they have yet to show any willingness to do that -- there will always be a need for property-tax relief.

Property tax reform -- I'll know it when I see it. And this isn't it. Not even close.

Columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: lhicks@yorkdispatch.com.