Assessors Challenge Property Tax Break Ten Officials Ask Supreme Court To Invalidate ‘Value Averaging’

Ten county assessors have asked the state Supreme Court to eliminate part of a referendum that they say would give an unfair tax break to owners of rapidly appreciating property.

In their request Friday for accelerated review, the five Republicans and five Democrats said the “value averaging” provision of Referendum 47, approved by a 2-1 margin at the polls last fall, would ease the property tax load at waterfront, view and prime business sites at the expense of property owners at other locations.

That effect would violate a state constitutional requirement that property taxes be applied evenly, the assessors said.

In addition, the assessors from Cowlitz, Ferry, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, San Juan, Skagit and Stevens counties said computer changes would cost $3.5 million to $4 million statewide - money that could not be recovered if value averaging is later found to be unconstitutional.

The case would not affect two other provisions of the referendum - one making permanent a 4.7 percent cut in the state property tax, roughly $52 a year on a $200,000 home, and the other requiring a vote by local taxing districts on any levy rate increase that exceeds the rate of inflation.

Brett Bader, a political consultant who ran the Referendum 47 campaign, said the assessors “are simply trying to undo what the voters say they want to see.”

At present, state law requires that real estate be taxed at fair market value. Under value averaging, the increase in the taxable value of property in any one year would be limited to 15 percent.

Had the referendum been in effect in 1992, Bainbridge Island houses would have been assessed on the average at 70 percent of market value, while those in Bremerton would have been taxed at 100 percent, Kitsap County Assessor Carol Belas said in a submission to the high court.

Counties would still be collecting the same total amount in taxes, so the referendum will boost the tax load for owners of property that does not gain so rapidly in value.

“Any way you cut it, if one taxpayer pays less, others pay more,” King County Assessor Scott Noble said.