By Sarah Smith
ssmith@parkrapidsenterprise.com
Death and taxes are hotly debated items and a political forum Saturday night in Park Rapids featured dozens of angry – and very much alive – Minnesota property owners.
“Property taxes are so screwed up in Minnesota,” Rep. Steve Green, Dist. 2B, led off the grousing.
Flanked by Rep. Dave Hancock, Dist. 2A, and Mazeppa Rep. Steve Drazkowski, chairman of the House Property Tax & Local Government Finance Division, Green said he convened the meeting at Northwoods Bank to get ideas on property tax reform. About half of the large audience was Becker County residents.
With 55 classes of taxable market values, and 70 with sub-classes, Minnesota’s property tax system is rank with favoritism, cronyism and a lack of accountability to its citizens, the crowd largely agreed.
“I ran for office when I couldn’t get answers,” Green acknowledged.
Roger Boyce, a Wolf Lake Township assessor, said “people were over-assessed and under-assessed; some not at all. I feel like I failed miserably. Taxpayers have no course of correction.”
He was preaching to the converted.
Many in the audience said they support a system of “true taxation” such as exists in Clearwater County, where the county employees do the assessments and rotate their duties to check one another.
Other counties, like Hubbard and Becker, have township assessors, whose work was widely criticized.
“True county assessing has to be mandatory,” said Becker County resident Les Ristinen, who has fought legal battles over taxation methods as a member and president of the Becker County Taxpayers Association.
Ristinen said assessors need to be accountable under the law and boards of equalization should be politically accountable. The whole property tax system is corrupted and corroded, Ristinen suggested, especially when assessors are voting members of boards of equalization. It’s a huge conflict of interest.
Citizens are helpless when it comes to protesting their property tax valuations, especially those with higher taxed lake frontage, many homeowners complained.
Homestead credits may be an outdated system, Green suggested, adding that legislators have nowhere to go but to property taxes to raise state revenues.
Clearwater County Assessor Cheryl Grover explained that sales of parcels of property dictate how property should be assessed.
But she said when Enbridge Energy recently bought property for $12,500 an acre when it was valued at $1,000 an acre, those sales have to be ignored because they skew values out of line.
“They wanted it for pump stations,” Grover said of the purchase.
Despite the occasional aberration, Grover said “when you have six sales under, you have to raise those values.”
Drazkowski said “there are a lot of variables” to assigning value to a piece of property.
Grover added that “duress pushes people to sell property at lower prices” than they’d like.
Ristinen said the system of township assessors does not promote rotation or checks and balances necessary to keep outliers honest. It has bred a system of favoritism. So have abatements.
“Somebody’s gotta be accountable county to county, township to township,” said a Becker County resident.
“There’s no uniformity,” said Hubbard County resident Arnold Leshovsky. “I would like to see counties take responsibility for assessing. At least if it’s wrong it’s universally wrong.”
The system is too complex, Leshovsky continues. Different properties are taxed differently, to the point that no one understands why.
Lobbyists throw another wrench into the system, pressuring legislators to value different parcels differently.
Fifteen to 20 assessors will have a difference of opinion,” Leshovsky said.
Drazkowski said the legislature is looking at an increase of 4.6 percent in property tax hikes, but legislators are “trying to get it down to 4 percent.”
“Property values are not the best way to gauge your wealth,” said a Becker County woman. “The income you take in is a better gauge of your wealth.”
Ristinen said the system of valuation and taxation results in some who say they pay 40 percent of their income to property tax and others who pay 2 percent.
“Most states cap it,” he added.
Then there’s John Clauer, a Park Rapids retiree.
Throughout his military career, Clauer said he lived in two dozen locations.
“We should make it equitable but Minnesota’s property taxes are the lowest” of all of his residencies, Clauer said.
Green said taxpayers have to be involved in any reforms.
“Some do a thorough job,” Leshovsky said of township assessors. “Others do it driving down the road. There’s no uniformity.”
