(Host) If you like to help people with their wedding vows, and poke
around in other peoples’ homes, commentator and Vermont Law School
professor Don Kreis has just the summer job for you.
(Kreis)
Summertime… and the livin’ is NOT easy for a small group of
Vermonters, of which I happen to be a member. I got into this fix
because I like to perform weddings. And really, w ho wouldn’t? You get
to invoke the mighty power of the state, you bask in the reflected glow
of newly united couples, — and, at least between Memorial Day and Labor
Day, you have a place to wear your seersucker.
Seeking those
pleasures, I got myself elected as one of my town’s justices of the
peace. But, for reasons of history rather than logic, when you’re
elected a justice of the peace in Vermont you also become a member of a
municipal body known as the Board of Civil Authority. And this time of
year, while everyone else in Vermont is enjoying those lazy, hazy crazy
days of summer, your local board of civil authority is hearing tax
appeals. Specifically, board members are listening to their neighbors
explaining why they think their real estate has been valued too lavishly
for property tax purposes.
The good news is that you get to be a
real estate voyeur, since every property that is the subject of a tax
appeal has to be inspected. The bad news is that you’re a body of
amateurs, reviewing the work of experts – and subject to being
overturned by a body of experts. The local board of listers, which makes
the initial tax valuation determinations, has fancy software and, quite
often, professional consultants.
A taxpayer who doesn’t like what the board of civil authority decides can take her case to the state tax appraiser.
Are
you getting the picture here? As a member of my local board of civil
authority, I’m just a guy in seersucker, sandwiched, process-wise,
between experts in real estate valuation.
Much of the time, the
stakes are relatively small. But not always! For example, this year the
Board of Civil Authority in Rockingham is deciding whether the local
hydroelectric dam is worth 108 million dollars, as the listers contend,
or just 86 million, as claimed by TransCanada, the big company that owns
the facility.
If TransCanada is right, the town will lose 640 thousand dollars in tax revenue, this year alone.
Hearings
before the Board of Civil Authority can get pretty heated, at least in
my experience. So, as I spend yet another hot summer evening in the
basement of my town hall, I find myself wondering yet again if maybe we
should just abolish Boards of Civil Authority and let people like me get
back to doing weddings.
But, on reflection, I think that would
be a mistake. Property taxes are an important part of Vermont’s social
compact. We could consign the relevant decision making purely to the
experts. But I expect it’s better to have at least one step in the
process that’s all about the commonsense wisdom of neighbors simply
listening to each other.