Group wants Fulton tax appeals filmed

By Johnny Edwards

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The director of a taxpayer advocacy group has a message for Fulton County officials who hear homeowners' assessment appeals: Show some respect.

Barbara Payne, of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, says she's hearing too many reports of residents treated as "second-class citizens" when they try to lower their tax values, and she's putting officials on notice that her network of members will start filming hearings. In a complaint to Board of Equalization Director Melvin Richardson, Payne said she's heard that board members and county appraisers, after refusing to adjust overinflated values, are "daring" property owners to appeal on to Superior Court because they'll only lose.

"I find it very disheartening to hear month after month after month how property owners are being treated in mediation and at BOE hearings," Payne said in an e-mail to Richardson. "There is absolutely no reason why someone should feel like a second-class citizen, when they are doing what is their legal right to do -- appeal their property taxes."

Richardson said board members are taxpayers, too, selected out of the jury pool and trained by the state Department of Revenue; and he has no evidence of them talking down to property owners.

Filming hearings was made legal under Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers' tax reform bill passed last year.

"Everything we do here is transparent," Richardson said. "We're in the business of being impartial. We're in the business of being fair."

Fulton has 13 three-member Equalization boards, each of which has 12 hearings scheduled per day Monday through Thursday and six on Friday.

The boards are part of the second tier in the property appeals process. If a taxpayer disagrees with the value assigned by the Board of Assessors' appraisers, they have a choice of appealing to the Board of Equalization, going into binding arbitration or going before a hearing officer if their property is valued at $1 million or more with no homestead exemption. Beyond that, they can appeal to a Superior Court judge.

Ken Reid, one of the homeowners who reported ill treatment to Payne, said he wouldn't use the word "dare," but there were insinuations from a county appraiser that he would face a tough fight if he took his appeal to court. Last month, he and his wife went before an Equalization board, which he called "a huge waste of our time."

Reid said he wanted the 2010 value on his house in Atlanta's Morningside area lowered from $880,000 to $810,000, but the panel seemed to have little sympathy for him because he bought it for almost $1.2 million in 2007. His bill will be about $14,500 -- too much, he says, compared to his neighbors.

"Everybody in the entire world knows that happened to the real estate market in 2009 -- it tanked," Reid said. "I'm not asking for anyone to feel sorry for me. I want to pay a fair share, and not a dime more."

Payne said she's been hearing such complaints for the past three years.

"The BOE should just start cussing people out," she said, "because that, at least, would be direct."

Richardson said he suspects Payne is trying to drum up controversy to get her membership numbers up. Both he and Fulton Chief Appraiser Burt Manning said they've had complaints of their people being unreasonable, but it's usually because someone didn't get the tax value they wanted.

Richardson pointed out that Reid's value was originally at $926,600.

"It appears they listened to something," he said of the Equalization board.