A state property tax overhaul that was intended to benefit taxpayers has created unintended consequences for some counties, swelling their workloads and forcing them to adjust their budgets by as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the next few weeks, Fulton County Board of Equalization officials plan to ask for an additional $250,000 to $450,000 for expenses through December, said Melvin Richardson, the county's BOE office director.
"With increased work comes increased costs, and we have experienced that in Fulton," he said. The county's BOEs handled a record-setting 15,000 appeals for the 2010 tax year, and they are handling 31,000 for 2011.
The budget juggling also played out last week in Cobb County when the county's Superior Court clerk had to ask the County Commission for $30,000 to fund the county’s BOE budget through the end of the fiscal year that ends in September.
Under the legislation that took effect last year, the BOEs -- three-member panels of citizens appointed by grand juries to hear property tax appeals -- were transferred from the control of county tax assessors’ offices to the Superior Court clerks. With this change also came a requirement that counties send all property owners an assessment notice with estimated tax bill information.
For many counties that had not sent out annual notices before the new law, the action led to an increase in the number of property owners appealing their assessments. Ultimately, the increase trickled down to the BOEs, whose workloads also increased.
And the costs and work increases, specifically in Fulton County, were almost inevitable, said John Sherman, president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, because the county has not accurately reflected the decline in housing values in setting its assessments.
"The cost to the taxpayers, and all of this is paid by the taxpayers, is caused by the higher assessments," Sherman said, who still believes the tax legislation was necessary. "When assessments are too high, taxpayers naturally appeal, and I do believe the boards of equalization are working overtime today."
Sen. Chip Rogers, who sponsored the legislation that was passed in 2010, agreed wit Sherman that the problems are the result of inflated assessments, as well as an antiquated property tax system.
“The fact is if the assessments were correct there wouldn’t be so many appeals,” said Rogers, R-Woodstock. “When we see local governments having to expend additional resources to handle the appeals, it just highlights the need to scrap this system.”
The greater workload is also affecting how counties do their business. Before asking for more money, Cobb’s clerk, Jay Stephenson, had already changed how the BOEs operated. Instead of an appointment-based system that gave appealing property owners an assigned time to report for their case, Stephenson changed the format to a calendar-call system that requires scores of property owners to sign in so their appeals can be heard on a first-come, first-served basis. The move helped keep BOE members busy with other cases when some property owners failed to show. He also moved the BOEs from a four-day workweek to a five-day one.
The commission approved the $30,000 request and tapped its contingency fund to pay the BOE members’ salaries of $25 per hour.
Like Cobb, DeKalb County also adopted the calendar-call format to accommodate the extra BOE work.
“It wasn’t popular, but it is what it is,” said Debra DeBerry, the county’s Superior Court clerk. “That way you don’t lose any of your hours to no-shows, and we had large numbers of no-shows here.”
Based on its population, DeKalb is authorized to operate 13 BOEs, but it only uses between three and six panels because there isn’t space to accommodate more, DeBerry said. The BOEs have heard about 14,600 appeals for 2011.
DeBerry asked for additional funding for the BOE budget this year but didn’t get her full request. DeKalb’s BOE office budget is $442,000, including $240,000 for member salaries. She has also asked for additional operating space.
Fulton has also made some changes in its operation of the BOEs. With the extra workload, the county has jumped from operating seven boards simultaneously each weekday to 10, and Richardson wants to operate 12 boards.
Smaller counties such as Douglas and Forsyth have implemented additional boards and increased BOE members' work schedules. For example, Douglas had operated two BOEs on a rotating schedule, but it is gearing up to have both boards hear cases simultaneously, the county's Superior Court clerk said.
And large Gwinnett County saw a slight increase in its appeals before the county's BOEs from 2010 to 2011, but the clerk of the court's finance manager, Mark Wozniak, said good budget planning before the boards were transferred to the court clerk's office helped. "In 2011 the budget we put together came in within the [budgeted amount], so our starting point was apparently good from what we were provided by the assessor's office," he said.
Counties such as Cherokee have fared better with the law changes. That county was already sending out the information to all property owners each year.
“It’s the counties that never did it or only sent them out on a five- or 10-year basis that are getting slammed,” said Cherokee Superior Court Clerk Patty Baker, but she’s heard from several of her colleagues across the state who are having trouble keeping up with the BOE work.
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Cherokee has been able to continue operating its three BOEs with scheduled appointments for appeals every 15 minutes.
“We’re following a lot of the same guidelines that the tax assessor did,” Baker said. “Everything is pretty consistent here.”
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