Editorial

Local property taxes need attention in the Legislature

Posted 9/29/22

Legislators: remember what you heard and what you said about lowering property taxes. The issue isn’t going away.

Candidates in the 2022 primary election heard from voters that rising …

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Editorial

Local property taxes need attention in the Legislature

Posted

Legislators: remember what you heard and what you said about lowering property taxes. The issue isn’t going away.

Candidates in the 2022 primary election heard from voters that rising property taxes are front of mind. Recent delivery of tax bills to taxpayers only increases the drum beat. Property owners are demanding change.

And is there any wonder? Park County Assessor Pat Meyer flat out says he has never before seen increases of 25% to 45% in property tax bills, such as were commonplace in the county in 2022. And he’s been in the assessor’s office for 37 years, the last 12 as elected County Assessor.

The statewide average increase in property tax historically has been under 5% per year. 

That was until 2021 when this county, and others, started to take a tax hit because people want to live here. 

Wyoming is a fixed rate state of property tax collection, in contrast to budget states where property taxes are set by what you need to fund the budget. You go for what you need in a budget state. In a fixed rate state, the tax bills inflate in tandem with rising property values, even though the tax assessment is constant at 9.5%.

These are real numbers, very real to me. Property taxes on my residential property went up $850.61, or 28.4% this year. Same house, same lot, no improvements. By contrast, property taxes on my residential property actually went down three years ago.

Some relief measures for property tax bills could be accomplished by the Legislature in the near term; others may take longer in the event a constitutional amendment is required. 

Assessor Meyer has been researching property tax limits in other states and talking to the Legislature’s revenue committee about a fix. To change the whole method of property tax assessment in Wyoming could take a constitutional amendment. He sees an answer short of that by setting tax limits, in effect granting a homeowner exemption or tax credit for everyone if they own their own home and have lived in it, for say, three to five years. Such a program is already in statute though it hasn’t been used since the 1980s. It would take legislative reworking. But potentially, it could lower property tax bills on average by several hundred dollars annually.

Meyer is recommending that legislators adopt a statewide limit that would hold maximum property tax increases to 5% or 6% per year. “We will have a program of help for our senior citizens on low incomes,” he emphasized, but said the type of homeowner exemption he visualizes should be available to all Park County homeowners.

Meyer even goes so far as to say the present system permits local governments and some special taxing districts at maximum mill levies to collect more money than is needed. At the same time that market values of real estate are rising, the county’s assessed valuation has gone up from $626 million to $874 million, the third highest level in county history, due primarily to oil and gas fetching higher prices. 

“Why collect the money if it’s not needed?” he reasons. “We don’t need to be doing this to our taxpayers.” 

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