(Continued)
.....Every property, 100% of all properties taxed at 100%. No more 45% discounts for "primary residences". Got it? No more arguments over whether a house in St. George is a primary or non primary residence. 100% taxed equally. At the same rate...the whole State.
Then I want you to consider this. If you take a ten or twenty year look back, property tax is a little less than one percent (like .997634 or something). If you eliminate all these statistical nonsense of coefficients of variation, and coefficients of dispersions and all the things that have been talked about here today, which are difficulties with assessing properties based on the current system. If you eliminate all the assessors offices statewide and go to a simple "acquisition value" taxation system. A single cheap Dell computer could do the entire State for less than $1,000. What we have here is something too hard to even think about. Even professional assessors (referring to the Utah Co. assessor I think he was) say the sophisticated statistical techniques are so complex to apply and difficult to understand he didn't even want to attempt it. What you have here is a mess or what we used to call a "fur ball" in fighter pilot "dog fight" jargon. And there comes a time when you have to do something completely different in order to break out of the fight and prevail.
And for those of you who are in Real Estate or members of the powerful Realtors Association lobby I want you to consider this. If you don't get on-board with what turns out to be every State in the Union, except five (which are currently considering going to this simple system) you will see your precious 6% commissions cut to shreds anyway. Because we are going to begin to sell our properties to each other for $500. And 6% of $500 is only $30, not $30,000. You need to seriously understand what is happening. People are not stupid and they are seeing through this whole Real Estate based hyped up scheme. And they will revolt just as soon as someone comes along with a better alternative. Ninety percent of this Country has already done just that. Thank you - my minute is up.
Afterward is where any real progress was made. People clustered in small conversational groups.
I lobbied with several, but focused on Senator Wayne Niederhauser, Co Chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee. I explained to him the details of the basis for "Acquisition Value" taxation. I included deductions for bogus realtor's commissions and the costs for curb appeal which actually add no value to a property at the sale. Senator Niederhauser asked questions, admitted his CPA professional training and background, as well as his developer current business interests. He said clearly he was not a Realtor association member nor a Realtor. This because of my continued probing into his interests with comments like "You probably already know about this...there are more than 22 Realtors now as legislators. And they have displaced attorneys over the past six years. As many as forty (40) meet regularly to scrutinize any possible legislation being considered. They meet to analyze any possible negative impacts such legislation might have on their "business interests" and their "6%" commissions.
"You passed, for example, a "Minimum Services Real Estate Act" to preserve their 6% commissions and defend against on-line services which offer to list and sell properties for fixed fees of say $500. This Internet service has already spread across the Country and would have promoted more real estate sales and actually - ironically made the claims of Utah Realtors Association members valid instead of propaganda. It would have actually validated their claim to support low property taxes and lower housing costs. Yet you let them bully their way and not in the best interests of your constituents. You were wrong then and apparently often over the past six years as they whittled away any relief from what we are now experiencing.
You need to know that I will personally guarantee that the word gets out. They will be exposed to everyone in this State. The walls of that particular scheme will, like all dishonest "ponzi schemes", come tumbling down. It starts here and now. I do not like to be lied too and neither do my neighbors. There are more of us every day who are kicking the props out from under that particular inappropriate lobby group.
Senator Niederhauser smiled and asked, "How many lawyers do you think are in the legislature?" To which I replied the Realtors have successfully displaced enough of them that over the past six years - they have bent and manipulated laws in favor of their own interests. They literally and almost blatantly brag about it openly in articles to the National Realtor's Association. These people will be likely targets for replacement over the next few years. It will not matter how much money they can spend or tricks they try to pull politically. We are not stupid and the wrath of the voters will far exceed the greed, corruption, and propaganda campaigns these few people, but big money, they can produce. They need to have their attention gotten and they will...this I can pretty much guarantee.
I asked him "How could Utah conceivably hold onto this ludicrous notion of staying a "non-disclosure" State just on ethical and moral grounds? How could we continue this non-sense of trying to hide the truth and facts from an over zealous tax assessor's office and cheat our neighbors? How on cultural grounds if nothing else, could the Utah State legislature persist with the URA line and propaganda rejecting honesty and openness and accountability? (Here readers need to know a previous Davis County Commissioner had explained how if he bought a half million dollar property he would not report it. Instead he like others (implied) would lay low so that his property would be under valued at the $350,000 of his neighbors on both sides. He felt we were not ready to become a full disclosure State...he is a Realtor by the way.)
I explained the analogy of how we used to be taxed on our vehicles. How it turned us all into tax cheats and liars. It even dictated what year vehicle we drove for years. Until someone came along and figured it out. Now we are all reasonably satisfied with the vehicle tax system because it at least makes a little sense to us. This is what we need and want with property taxes.
I iterated my speech asking where anyone was proposing our youth and young family's live? Representative Froerer and friends seem to want a reverse mortgage situation which will fatten the mortgage bankers wallets and ultimately the insatiable demands for more and more tax money by local and state government while attending to Realty interests/commissions. It will make his and their real estate champions ecstatic over turnover and commissions. But it leaves our children out in the cold with no place to call home in Utah. Are we to cram back into our homes with multiple large families like our Southern Immigrant families to make ends meet? The proposals he outlined are somewhere between outrageous and beyond even the AARP support. (1) Deferred taxes (with interest and principle payable upon death). Now there's a cheery prospect. Bad news is your mother died. Worst news is she owes the State or some scum bag legislator's mortgage bank business, the family farm plus interest. Go borrow or sell to pay off the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes and/or loans.) DOA non-sense. (2) Increase Circuit Breaker to the mid 30s (....$35,000ish) DOA Horse hockey which again ducks the "disease" (property reassessments out of control). To qualify for what? Up to $795 off a property tax bill of more than $4,000 that should be less than $800 to begin with?) More DOA non-sense. (3) Expand the one acre discount to more (?) in jurisdictions which require by ordinance a minimum of say three (3) acres. DOA non sense again. It is pandering to a specific constituency. It will be resented by others and create more problems. And it is a "pure" form of Band Aid which does not address any disease at all. A non solution. (4) Do a rolling average of the past five years of property taxes to eliminate the "spikes" caused by irregular County assessments. DOA Snake oil and a statistical search of a problem to "smooth". Figures don't lie. But liars will figure. This is a gadget approach designed to slip it to us all gently. Get the same revenue essentially, but do it on the "QT" ...so it won't cause so much outrage in the future. This is again a non solution - but worse a bad non-solution.
Dear people, if any of these proposals pass, every single Senator and Representative who voted for them needs to be escorted out of the State Capital building complex with his belongings in a card board box within weeks if not months.
We are headed - as the 4th highest taxed (total taxes considered) in the Nation, for all that goes with being a National disgrace. Without some of the more intelligent members of the legislature taking control of some of as many as 40 to 60 "indecent proposals" we will become the laughing stock of the Nation. What is worse, we will have earned that distinction by indifference, apathy, and inaction.
There is hope. Senator Niederhauser explained that they are only meeting to discuss issues and formulate proposals. They are in essence in an exploratory mode right now. The formal session which begins in January is when someone could for example propose my initiative, a "Blue Ribbon Study Group" to come up with comprehensive tax reform recommendations.
The Town of Huntsville is still For Sale and media day will be next Saturday (press release is being drafted). There is much being planned involving forming coalitions with existing groups, networking, lobby efforts of our own, meeting to build our own platform, build a strategy to execute our objectives, replace ethically challenged legislators with honorable people, etc. to work within the system. All this even though the evidence is almost over whelming that "the legislative system" is broken and part of the problem instead of the solution.
Some of us agree with Walt P.'s commentary in the 4 October Standard Examiner Letter to the Editor. Dramatic action involving a ground swell of citizenry from across the State marching on the Governor's Mansion or the Legislature will be required ultimately.
That's a wrap,
Minor Machman
