Members of the State Board of Equalization told the legislative appropriations committee that recent changes to property tax exemptions and a newly enacted cap are producing unexpected and unequal tax liabilities across neighborhoods.

Board Chair Jane Mokler, Vice Chair Marty Hartzog and new member Carl Anderson described a largely salary-driven, static budget that has seen operations funding cut since 2019; the board said about 97 percent of its current budget pays salaries. The chair said the board seeks to carry a July salary increase into the coming biennium to restore market-competitive pay and retain members.

Hartzog said two years of data show the property tax cap in particular can create 'absurd' outcomes. He described a Natrona County appeal where a homeowner found that a higher-valued nearby property carried a lower tax bill because the cap altered assessed liabilities — an outcome the board said can undermine uniformity. "The cap ... throws off the values across the spectrum where you get some results that don't quite make sense on a uniformity standpoint," the board member said.

Board staff explained the appeals process: taxpayers may bring matters directly to district court via a declaratory judgment action, proceed first through a county board of equalization and then to the state board, or ask the board to use its investigatory authority to build an administrative record. The board noted it sometimes remands cases to counties for procedural deficiencies and said it does not systematically track winner/loser statistics for appeals but could attempt to produce that data.

Committee members asked about the board’s ability to measure the cap’s effects statewide and about specific remedies; board members said some impacts cannot be discerned from publicly available county records without additional analysis and, in one case, they re-examined the administrative record to find cap-driven distortions.

The State Board of Equalization also reported that its operations budget is down roughly 40 percent since 2019 after COVID-era reductions and that it functions with a very small staff handling appeals and technical analyses.