Be a tax watchdog

Property-tax notices have rattled many Utah homeowners this year like a sharp poke with a cattle prod. But before the people's anger turns into a bunch of feel-good, do-nothing laws during the upcoming legislative session, people need to understand the sources of the problem.

Some of the increases have to do with local governments deliberately raising taxes, in which case public hearings are held and people have a chance to be heard. Some are due to voter-approved bonds passed during recent election years. And, yes, some are related to real estate inflation but only in the sense that either counties are not updating all property assessments yearly or some parts of a county are appreciating faster than others.

An exhaustive look at property taxes statewide, published by this newspaper Sunday, showed that some local governments have indeed raised property taxes by double or more. But it also showed that the current state law governing property taxes, known as truth-in-taxation, works.

The law keeps governments from collecting more revenue from one year to the next, with some allowance for new growth. Collecting more requires them to post notice of a tax increase and hold public hearings. As the Utah Taxpayers Association notes, property values rose by 22.9 percent this year, while a Deseret Morning News analysis shows that property taxes rose 11.6 percent statewide. If local governments had not deliberately chosen to raise taxes, the law would have kept that increase to about 6 percent, mostly due to new growth.

At the moment, about 15 bills are in the works to fix what many perceive to be a property-tax crisis. Most of these address problems that don't exist. No reports have been made of people losing their homes to the tax collector.

However, some changes may be warranted. For instance, one proposed bill would change the requirement that county's reassess property values every five years. A lot of counties follow this requirement by reassessing 20 percent of their properties each year. That can result in the sort of mess that hit Davis County this year when the Bountiful area was assessed for the first time in many years, and right during a time of intense inflation.

Technology exists for each county to adjust all properties each year, based on formulas. Salt Lake County, the state's largest, already adjusts its values yearly.

But no legislative remedy can substitute for good old-fashioned community involvement. Local governments operate in the open. Their budgets are not secret. The best defense against huge tax increases is for people to turn into watchdogs who keep an eye on their own elected officials.