Dave Trabert and District Court Judge Charles Hart discussed Proposition K and the state of property taxes at a meeting in the Lakepoint theater in Augusta Tuesday night.
Trabert, the president of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, elaborated on the reformation Prop K would bring to the current system of property appraisals and subsequent property taxes.
The first step would be to adopt a baseline value of a property, which would be the property’s value as of Jan. 1, 2010, should Prop K get approved. The appraised value would be set, then raised by a formula rather than having it reset by an appraiser. The initial consensus increase would be two percent annually.
Trabert cited a study by the Kansas Department of Revenue, which revealed there has been a 130 percent increase in residential property taxes, and a 92 percent increase with all property taxes in the last 11 years. Prop K would benefit taxpayers by stopping appraisal-driven tax increases.
“There is no justification for a statewide 92 percent tax increase. There is no justification for a 153 percent increase in Butler County,” Trabert said. “Government doesn’t need that much money. It’s because of the way the system is designed. There’s no accountability.”
Prop K poses the idea of switching the increase to a fixed, proportional formula. Trabert used the example that a home valued at $80,000 and a neighboring home valued at $400,000 would have the same two percent rate of increase.
He said the fixed rate would be beneficial to government as well by making it easy to predict the revenue stream.
Should Prop K make the appraisal formula easier, it would not, in any way, eliminate the consumer’s ability to appeal the value. This part of the appraisal process is what Hart would like to see made easier. Hart said the cost of appeal sometimes are more costly than the actual difference in the appraised value, making the efforts not worthwhile. Furthermore, winning an arbitration appeal only lasts up to two years, something else Hart would like to see changed.
Hart said it was imperative to keep someone local in on the decision-making from the perspective of knowledge of the local market who also can reconcile differences based on similar properties in the area.
“The individuals they use now are brought in from outside,” Hart said. “It’s not anyone local that’s making the decision as far as what the value of the property is. It’s someone from somewhere else that maybe has never even seen the property, not familiar with the location, not familiar with lots of aspects of the market value.”
