Shut up and Pay Your Taxes

Fred Dooley is sounding the alarm about a potential change in the law regarding assessments. 

Under current law if you disagree with your property tax assessment you have the right to a hearing in front of a local board on that issue. If you disagree with the ruling of that board you have the right to appeal to the Circuit Court.

Under the current situation people had a nasty habit of winning those appeals at the Circuit Court level. Well, the assessors got together and lobbied the legislature for changes to the current system and AB 580 was passed by a vote of 94 to 3 in the Assembly and 32 to 1 in the Senate.

Huge kudos to Senator Lazich, and Assemblymen Schneider and Albers for voting no on this (Gundrum and A.Williams no-voted the bill). Every other member of the Assembly and Senate voted in favor of the assessors and against home owners. You were probably asleep as this was one of those 12:46 am passed in the middle of the night laws that everyone misses.

And now the bad news…

Under AB 580 the review board must now grant a 60-day extension to the tax payers objection. The board also gets to assess a new snappy $100 fee to that rabble rousing tax payer (assuming the municipality allows the extension). A hundred bucks for disagreeing with the assessor, isn’t that special!

Under the new bill the court is forced to make the assumption that the valuation by the assessor is correct.

Read the rest!