Missoula News

Property Tax Turbulence

Montana Property Reappraisal Wrath Keeps Growing

By Amy Linn, 12-17-09

Photo by Lido Vizzutti, Flathead Beacon

The property tax imbroglio in Montana just keeps on generating pain, wrath and finger-pointing, as residents protest the recent reappraisals that dramatically increased the value of their properties, raising their tax bills to similarly eye-popping levels.

Last week, more than 100 residents in Flathead County—home to some of the steepest property tax increases in the state—angrily confronted Republican lawmakers at a town hall meeting about the reappraisal process. As Jim Mann of the Daily Inter Lake reported, residents at the Kalispell event quizzed the panel about why and how the reappraisals—legally mandated to happen every six years—have created so much distress this time around.

Whitefish resident Bruce Tate said the appraised value on his property rose 350 percent this year, the Inter Lake reported. Somers resident Art Buckley said he’d have to pay “three times more in property tax in 2014 than he did in 2008.” (For more info on how this happened, click here.)

The somewhat amusing part of the story? Republicans at the meeting apparently tried to shrug off their involvement or blame the Montana Department of Revenue (DOR) for the problems. But in fact, the Republicans are the ones who crafted the reappraisal legislation in the first place—meaning they’re the ones responsible.

An original version of the property reappraisal bill (HB 658) came from Rep. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, who offered a variety of mitigations to ease the financial impact, including breaks for low-income residents, veterans and the elderly. But the bill was rewritten by the Republican-controlled Senate Taxation Committee, whose new version so displeased Jopek that he refused to vote for it. Gov. Brian Schweitzer allowed it to go into law without signing it.

Back in April, Schweitzer had suggested his own solution: “Limit residential property tax increases to no more than 5 percent yearly for the next two years and take up reappraisal again in 2011,” he told ace reporter Charles Johnson of the Missoulian.

The Republican-tweaked version of the bill was no good, Schweitzer told Johnson. “I don’t hear of any proponent of the bill as it stands right now, as the Senate’s amended it.”

So how are GOP lawmakers explaining themselves? At the Flathead meeting, several of them told the crowd they only voted for the measure because they were given “inaccurate information” from the DOR. (Note: DOR Director Dan Bucks says he actually provided more information to the legislature than ever before, all of it good.)

Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, said the DOR somehow hid information about the number of “outliers”—people who’d face drastic increases. “It was completely hidden when I looked at the chart, otherwise I never would have voted for it,” Jackson is quoted in a Flathead Beacon story by Molly Priddy.

No Democratic lawmakers were on the panel at the meeting, but here’s what Mike Jopek says about things:

“I think it’s a lot of posturing [by Republicans] at this point,” Jopek said today in an interview. “They want someone to blame. I don’t know if people didn’t understand the bill or what. But it was pretty predictable that this bill was going to be a failure.”

Like many public officials throughout the state, Jopek said he’s been hearing “some pretty gut-wrenching stories—an 80-year-old homeowner who says ‘I’m being forced to sell my home.’ Or people whose property taxes used to be $4,000, and now they’re $8,000, and by 2014 they’ll be $25,000,” he said.

The highest increases in the Flathead Valley are typically on expensive lakefront property. But “the normal, average, everyday folks” who now have to pay hundreds more dollars in property taxes each year are also suffering, Jopek said, particularly because of high unemployment and increased expenses for things like health insurance.

“I think there are solutions,” Jopek added. He said he and other lawmakers continue to talk about ways to fix things and will be meeting during the interim to try to hammer out answers.

And if lawmakers don’t find them? Some citizens will try to—via the courts.

Missoula CPA Patty Lovaas has already filed a lawsuit in U.S. District naming the DOR and Gov. Schweitzer as defendants. The lawsuit alleges that the latest reappraisal process violates the law because it creates unequal taxation, among other things.

Another potential litigant is Whitefish resident Dud Mahler of the Montana Residents for Fair Property Taxation, the Beacon reports. “The current system is unconstitutional because it creates a separate class of outliers that are taxed more than others,” Mahler told the crowd at the Flathead meeting. “I think the system is broke.”

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