The Political Hot Potato of Property Assessments

There are lots of responsibilities involved in running Jackson County, Mo., from maintaining a sprawling parks system to overseeing the county courts and working with an elected legislature to pass a budget.

But for Phil LeVota, the current Jackson County executive, the assignment is fairly straightforward.

“Clearly,” LeVota says, “my mandate of being in this office was to fix the tax debacle.”

LeVota has good reason to feel that way. His predecessor, Frank White, a former Kansas City Royals star, was recalled by voters in September partway through his third term. White began his political career with broad name recognition and popularity, but had prickly relationships with other elected officials in Jackson County and enraged some of the area’s wealthiest people with his opposition to a taxpayer-funded stadium deal two years ago.

But it was the 2023 property reassessment, resulting in dramatic tax increases for some homeowners and some widely publicized valuation discrepancies between seemingly similar homes, that generated the most public anger at White. His recall was supported by 85 percent of the voters (though turnout in the off-cycle election was low).

LeVota was selected to complete White’s term by a split 5-4 vote of the Jackson County Legislature in mid-October. A lawyer and former chair of the county Democratic Party, LeVota will occupy the seat until January of 2027. He’s promised he won’t run for a full term of his own, though after his first few weeks in office, he says lots of people are asking him to.

In November, LeVota announced a policy retroactively capping the 2023 property assessment increases at 15 percent, about half of the increase that the average homeowner received. Homeowners whose assessments rose by more than that will receive a credit for the difference spread over the next three years. The 15 percent cap is in keeping with an order from the State Tax Commission rolling back the 2023 assessments — an order that White and some other county leaders, including the appointed assessor, Gail McCann Beatty, had fought back against.

LeVota acknowledges that many properties in Jackson County had been undervalued for decades, resulting in different parts of the county shouldering unequal tax burdens. But he says White and his staff bungled not only the reassessment process but the appeals process and the political blowback from homeowners.

“He was deaf to the public saying, ‘This is too much,’” LeVota says. “Sometimes, even more than the numbers on the assessment, it was that the government wasn’t responding.”

LeVota fired McCann Beatty early in November, after she declined to resign from the position. County voters also approved a charter amendment that will allow them to elect property assessors in the future.

The firing of an assessor and the recall of a top county official are somewhat dramatic consequences of a property reassessment. But political headaches come with the territory.

The job of an assessor is typically to determine the fair market value of every property in a jurisdiction. That’s a tall order. When you add in the rapid rise in property values across the country in the last few years, it becomes more complicated still. Many communities’ official property assessments are outdated and undervalued, like Jackson County’s. When assessments are updated, homeowners often seize on discrepancies between like properties to cast doubt on the whole project.

“There’s a common misconception that assessors don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know how to do their job,” says Bill Healey, the chief assessor for Lewiston, Maine, and president-elect of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO).

The notion that reassessments are inaccurate or poorly managed can be convenient to elected officials who are in charge of setting the tax rates that ultimately determine the burden on property owners.

“When the taxing authorities don’t adjust the millage or levies accordingly [after a reassessment], the finger gets pointed at the assessor,” says Amy Rasmussen, the IAAO’s executive director. “It’s incumbent upon the taxing authorities to adjust the levies.”

Rising property valuations have sparked a backlash in places like Wilmington, Del., and Cook County, Ill., home to Chicago, in recent months. There’s also been a broader movement to eliminate property taxes altogether, which has had momentum in states like Florida and Texas.

Still, property taxes provide the bulk of most jurisdictions’ revenue, and eliminating them could upend public finances. Assessors also point out that property taxes, unlike sales taxes or income taxes, are subject to appeal. Capping assessment increases may assuage some of the backlash in the short term, but it’s an approach that could artificially depress property valuations over time. Independent groups like the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, recommend adjusting tax rates to account for new valuations rather than “artificially” capping assessments.

In Jackson County, LeVota says he’s hoping to hire more assessors to do the next round of assessments. He’s also hoping to change the way appeals are handled, so that the county will have to show why its valuations are correct, rather than forcing property owners to prove their homes are worth less than the assessment says.

“If somebody’s house is appraised for $200,000, they were having to prove why it wasn’t worth $200,000,” LeVota says. “We’re going to prove why it is, not put the burden on the taxpayer. I think that’s going to be a big change.”