Rumblings of potential taxpayer revolt

Inside Tucson Business
Steve Emerine

7/26/2007

Comments I heard at three very different meetings during a five-day period hint that property taxes and values might be major issues in next year’s state and local elections. And Pima County’s ambitious bond package could be dead before arrival.

At the July 12 meeting of the Nucleus Club, a Democratic group, some folks asked about Democrat Bill Staples and his staff at the County Assessor’s Office. Obviously not fans of the incumbent, the questioners knew I once held the office.

They weren’t happy about the 2008 full cash values the assessor sent out earlier this year. They criticized how county employees handled taxpayers who inquired about the values or appealed them.

I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but the next day I had lunch with The Poets’ Club, a loose-knit group of architects, planners, engineers, appraisers and other active or retired businessmen who meet only when it’s Friday the 13th.

Despite a different cast, I heard many of the same complaints from the night before. They said the assessor’s staff often stamps “no change” on valuation appeals instead of granting reductions that are obviously merited. Taxpayers then must appeal to the State Board of Equalization, populated in part with (surprise!) retired assessors and their employees.

(A confession here: I was a state hearing officer for two years, more than two decades after leaving the Assessor’s Office. Some of my former employees still worked there, however, and were often more upset with my decisions when they lost than were taxpayers who didn’t win.)

The third meeting I attended was July 16 with the Pima Association of Taxpayers, a group as far to the right as the Nucleus Club is to the left. Given the Pima Association of Taxpayers’ support for lower taxes and spending, their complaints were predictable but not much different from what I heard at the other two meetings.

Tom Jenney, executive director of the Arizona Federation of Taxpayers, reported that Arizona Tax Revolt, a group from Bullhead City, is moving to put a statewide initiative on the 2008 ballot to extend limits on how much counties, cities and community college districts can spend each year. He said the group also might propose limiting property values. If that sounds like California’s 1978 Proposition 13, it is.

Tucsonan Bill Heuisler almost swept Arizona into the Proposition 13 ranks in 1980, but Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt, Republican legislative leaders Burton Barr and Frank Kelley, and business and civic leaders headed it off with a counter proposal voters approved later that year.

There’s been no major overhaul of state property tax laws since then.

Heuisler now is an officer of the Pima Association of Taxpayers.

The meetings I attended show the natives are getting restless. If that continues, we may see an Arizona version of Proposition 13 next year.

And the county’s bond proposal, said to be close to $700 million and dependent on property taxes, could be toast.