Property taxes:
They want to intervene, saying outcome could bring higher appraisals.
Six Austin homeowners say city’s lawsuit could drive up appraisals.
Six Austin homeowners say a lawsuit the city of Austin filed last month, which contends that Texas’ property appraisal system is unconstitutional, could result in “higher and unequal appraisals for everyone.”
Those homeowners are asking to intervene in the lawsuit, which the city filed in state District Court against the Travis Central Appraisal District to continue challenging the 2015 appraisals of 43,644 commercial and vacant land properties valued at about $52 billion.
Attorneys Lorri Michel and Joseph Harrison IV, who are representing the homeowners, have in part made names for themselves by representing commercial properties that sue appraisal districts over their values.
Attorney and former County Judge Bill Aleshire, who is also involved, represents Texas ProTax, one of the major firms representing property owners who protest appraisals.
The city’s lawsuit asks the court to strike down the “equal and uniform” provisions in state law that allow property owners to protest value by showing that their appraisal was higher than the
median appraisal of comparable properties.
Michel said more than 60,000 residential “equal and uniform” protests were filed in Travis County this year. Protests can also argue that the appraisal is higher than the property’s market value.
“Taxation in Texas is mandated to be equal and uniform, and what that means is that one property owner should not be required to pay more than another property owner when you’re talking about similar or comparable properties,” Michel said.
The homeowners Michel and the other attorneys are representing are: Stanley Thomas Ford, Elizabeth Halley Ginsberg, Ariel Dvorin, Rose A. Hayden, Louise C. Truehardt and David Henry Alsmeyer.
The city’s lawsuit said that when commercial property owners take “equal and uniform” protests to court, appraisal districts are forced to reduce their values because losing would mean paying the owner’s attorneys’ fees. The effect is a downward spiral of appraisals to below market value, the lawsuit said.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said Friday that “state law should not allow any property owner, commercial or residential, to have their tax value set at anything other than market value.” The idea is that if all properties were appraised at the value they would sell for — not at a value based on other appraisals — properties would be taxed equally and uniformly.
Attorney Debbie Cartwright, who is representing the Travis appraisal district, declined to comment on the arguments made by the homeowners. Even though Travis Chief Appraiser Marya Crigler appeared alongside Adler and other city officials to announce the lawsuit last month, that doesn’t mean the district supports the lawsuit, Cartwright said.
“We don’t agree with the lawsuit itself,” Cartwright said. “Some of the claims as to the problems with the lack of sales disclosure, the need for changes in the law regarding equal and uniform, are issues the chief appraiser has spoken about often. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we agree with the claims.”
As far as the lawsuit’s attack on the “equal and uniform” provisions, Cartwright said it’s the district’s “hope that at some point in time a court will make some determination on that issue. However, we are not certain that this is the correct mechanism to do so.”
Cartwright said the city’s lawsuit could cost the district — and ultimately taxpayers — more than $500,000. The district’s funding comes from taxing entities in Travis County, including the city of Austin.
The city’s lawsuit also asks the court to declare that mandatory disclosure of property sales prices is needed in Texas for appraisal districts to do their jobs.
Michel said the city’s lawsuit improperly asks the court to mandate sales price disclosure, which she said only the Legislature has the power to do. Bills that would mandate sales price disclosure have failed to pass the Legislature on many occasions, Michel said.
If a court finds that prohibiting sales price disclosure violates the state’s constitution, the court could ask the Legislature to fix it or “just fix it itself,” Adler said.