While new Idaho Gov. Jim Risch toys with calling a special session to address rising property taxes, residents in Kootenai and Bonner counties are white-hot angry about the assessment notices they received in the mail last week.

An 86-year-old Lake Pend Oreille retiree saw the assessment on her property jump $285,288, or 232 percent over last year’s. Lakeshore property owners can tell similar tales about the sticker shock they received when they opened their assessment notices. Even Kootenai County Assessor Mike McDowell wasn’t immune. He’s considering an appeal to the assessment of family property on Lake Pend Oreille in Bonner County, which his grandparents homesteaded in the late 1880s.

McDowell felt taxpayer anger personally when he received a profane phone call at home early Wednesday morning from an angry taxpayer who complained that the assessor was taxing him out of his home and belonged “in a hole in the ground.” In the face of such abuse, McDowell found it impossible to explain to the belligerent caller that his office sets the value of the property, not budgets that affect taxes. Dozens of taxing districts in the county do that job.

All is not lost for most homeowners who, in Kootenai County, saw their property assessments increase an average of 40 percent this year.

Not only should they lobby the governor to follow through and call a special session of the Legislature to address property tax reform, but they should demand that the elected officials governing the local taxing districts on their assessment notices control spending as they set budgets. No longer can property owners simply complain about soaring assessments and taxes in a hot housing market. They must hold local taxing districts accountable for their budgets, from the big ones like cities, counties and schools to the smaller ones like highway and fire districts.

Ultimately, however, runaway assessments accompanied by escalating property taxes may require the state to overhaul the tax system by shifting some or all of school maintenance and operation costs onto the sales tax, or by dramatically increasing the homeowners exemption. The 2006 Legislature upped the exemption from $50,000 to $75,000. But the amount would need to be doubled to help land-rich homeowners with inadequate incomes hang onto their property.

Risch understands the relationship between state policy and local property taxes and would welcome a bill to use the current revenue surplus and a half-cent increase in the sales tax to provide relief. The proposal is worthy of discussion. However, Risch will hold office only until early January. Unless reluctant legislators are willing to address property tax reform in a summer session, the current anti-tax climate will continue into next year.

In the interim, the property tax unrest could prompt a draconian citizen’s initiative, like Idaho’s old One Percent Initiative, and help ultraconservative candidates, such as Bonner County’s Bud Mueller, win important county commissioner seats. The 23 incumbent county commissioners who suffered primary losses statewide in May can attest that inaction on property taxes and growth can have dire consequences for elected officials.