Senate panel rejects Hart’s home-seizure bill
BOISE – A North Idaho legislator will have to try a fourth time to pass his plan to return some money to property owners who lose their homes because of unpaid taxes.
A Senate committee Wednesday rejected a bill by Rep. Phil Hart, R-Athol, forcing counties to return surplus proceeds from the auction of homes seized by counties for unpaid taxes. Currently, local governments can keep that extra money.
While several senators expressed disdain for government keeping surpluses, opponents of HB 216 said Hart should work more closely with Idaho’s county officials to find a fair way to deal with seized property.
Sen. Lee Heinrich, R-Cascade, said he’s “never seen an abuse” of the present process.
“There’s no reason in my mind that I can support bad legislation over something that is working,” he said. “It’s not as though they are profiteering. They use it for the public good.”
A representative of the Idaho Association of County Treasurers promised to return with alternative legislation next year, while Hart characterized his interaction with county groups as “adversarial” but said he will try again next year.
The House passed HB 216 last week 43-26. That’s the furthest one of Hart’s proposals on this topic has made it.
Hart said government keeping all money from sales of seized property may be unconstitutional.
“I think the procedure is wrong, and there is a violation of people’s rights when the county gets more than they’re entitled to,” he said.
Hart began pushing the issue after the McGuckin case in Bonner County several years ago. The county sold JoAnn McGuckin’s 40 acres on Garfield Bay at auction for unpaid taxes after a five-day standoff with her children and a pack of dogs in 2001.
The unpaid taxes were just a fraction of the home’s value.
“When these things sell at auction, they don’t sell for fair market value,” Hart said.
Few seizures occur annually, but they affect the mentally disabled and people who have left the country, Hart said. While there should be a penalty for delinquent taxpayers, “how big does that club have to be?” he said.
Property owners currently have three years to begin paying off back taxes before a county seizes their land.
Hart’s bill would have reimbursed counties for expenses of handling the sale but returned the remainder to the owner. Owners would have had 90 days to claim any surplus money. If more than one person made a claim, a district court judge would have resolved the dispute.
The bill also would have prohibited counties from taking control of seized properties by paying the back taxes.
County officials, however, testified that the current process works and is used rarely and reluctantly.
Kootenai County Commissioner Rick Currie said the county seized about 35 properties last year, of which it sold five. He personally visited two homes to notify owners.
From 2003 to 2006, Kootenai County seized 235 properties, including 23 homes and four businesses, Currie said. Most of those non-residential properties were “absolute slivers.”
“We are not here to take property,” Currie said. “We don’t want to, but it is our charge to represent all the taxpayers of our community. So we do have to sometimes carry that hammer.”
Donna Peterson, Payette County treasurer and a representative of the Idaho Association of County Treasurers, said the bill might harm counties that have liens against property. The small number of owners who don’t pay may sometimes borrow money and bargain with county commissioners for more time, she said.
“At what point do those parties of interest have to be responsible?” she asked. “These people are already three to four years delinquent. Are we going to continue to baby-sit them?”
Hart said while Kootenai County officials “bend over backward so people don’t end up in this situation,” not all county leaders might go to such lengths.
Although he voted against the bill, Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, said it’s “just not fair for a government agency to make a profit.”
“From a public standpoint, it just doesn’t sound very good,” he said.