Local & State Headlines

Tax lawsuit up for appeal

• A judge's ruling in a taxpayers' lawsuit is being sent to the Georgia Court of Appeals for review.

Carlton Fletcher

ALBANY — Tifton Judicial Circuit Senior Judge John D. Crosby has forwarded his recent ruling denying the Dougherty County Board of Tax Assessors’ Jan. 23 motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a number of Dougherty taxpayers to the Georgia Court of Appeals seeking a Certificate of Immediate Review.

Julius M. Hulsey and Jane A. Range with the Gainesville law firm Hulsey, Oliver & Mahar sent Hilliard P. Burt, attorney for Dougherty taxpayers Richard R. Thomas, Lonnie Smith, Donnie Smith, Judy Lee, Michael Smith, C.W. Hopkins, Curtis Smith, John O’Brien, Jerry Brooks, Hilton Merchant, Tim Coley and Cecil Musgrove, notice of the certificate in a letter dated Friday.

The taxpayers won a major victory last week in their case seeking relief from what they claim was a flawed countywide tax revaluation when Crosby, in denying the tax assessors’ and Tax Director Denver Hooten’s motion to dismiss, ruled that all 18 of the charges presented by the taxpayers in the case had merit.

Dougherty County Attorney Spencer Lee said Monday the Certificate of Immediate Review will allow the state court of appeals to review Crosby’s ruling and determine if the taxpayers’ suit should be included in hearings that will include some 150 appeals cases that are pending in Dougherty Superior Court.

Lee said the 150 parcels represent the remainder of the 5,000 appeals that were registered when revaluation notices were first sent out in 2007. Appeals were initially heard by representatives of the company that set parcel values (Tyler CLT of Ohio), then by the Board of Tax Assessors and finally by a grand jury-appointed Board of Equalization.

“A motion was granted to bifurcate the cases into those based on value and those based on uniformity,” Lee said. “A stay was granted on trials of parcel appeals based on value until a ruling was made on those based on uniformity (of the digest).

“This separate case, the county feels, should be ruled on with the others. We feel all issues come under the same administrative process.”

Attempts to contact Burt Monday were unsuccessful.

Thomas, a member of the taxpayer group Concerned Citizens of Dougherty County, said the review amounted, as he understood it, to part of the legal process.

“This is the next step we expected,” he said Monday. “We’re still cautiously optimistic that our case will see a jury trial. This is something of a two-pronged case: The rule of law will be addressed by the judges, but we hope the factual matters will be heard by a jury.

“In a case like this, you hope that five or six of the things you bring up are ruled to have merit. Judge Crosby kept all 18 of ours in, so we feel pretty good that our case will eventually be heard by a jury.”

Thomas said he and the other taxpayers sought class-action designation in the suit to give the “little people” of the county a voice.

“At some point, it becomes a matter of principle,” he said. “There are people who have a stake in this who can’t even afford the $75 in costs to appeal their case to Superior Court. These are the people who have everything they own tied up in their $80,000 homes.

“The reason our local officials are screaming about this, the reason they’re spending $100,000 in taxpayer money to bring in an outside law firm, is that it brings to light the fact that they have frittered away millions of our dollars on some of the most useless things you can imagine. It’s abominable what the lack of leadership in the city (commission), county (commission) and school board has cost the taxpayers of this county.”

Lee said the county spent more than $1 million on the first countywide reassessment since 1963 to bring its tax digest in line with state requirements. The county’s failure to bring its digest to within a deviation of 4 percent above or below 40 percent of fair market value on all properties had already cost it $60,000 in fines.

“It’s an age-old process set up to see that taxpayers pay a fair share, quite frankly,” Lee said. “Our Board (of Tax Assessors) followed that process. At the end of the day, all they want to do is list the county’s properties as close to fair market value as they can get.”

Thomas and his fellow plaintiffs, however, say in their suit that, among other things, Tyler used a mass appraisal methodology that considered only square footage and age to determine a parcel’s value, that the company set a flat per-acre price for farmland, that the Tax Assessors Board discouraged taxpayers during the appeals process by scheduling numerous hearings at the same time and by naming members of (three) boards of equalization who were not likely to support the reduction of appraised property values.

Thomas said the suit and the growth of the taxpayers group (“We expect to have 5,000 members in the next few months,” he said) show an increased dissatisfaction with the manner in which local government in the county is conducted.

“We’re having a meeting tomorrow to talk about candidates, and we hope to find some responsible candidates to take on those in office right now,” he said. “I think that will be a step in the right direction; we can’t stand by and do nothing any longer.

“You know, during this whole ordeal, not one government official has had the courage to come to one of our meetings and hear our complaints, and not one has said maybe we need to back off and take another look at this.”

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