What They Say - - -

Where Does The Blame Lie?
TAX ASSESSMENT PROBLEM*

A Grand Jury couldn't have done a better job of indicting this county's tax system than did Sangamon County officials yesterday when they appeared at a State Revenue Department hearing to protest a proposed increase in the state tax multiplier for 1957 assessments.

County Clerk M. B. Overaker and Homer Mendenhall, chairman of the county board of supervisors, opened the closet door to reveal a familiar skeleton when the former testified that many pieces of commercial property are over-taxed and the latter testified that "some homes are not on the assessment rolls properly"—meaning they are under-taxed, comparatively.

Put the pieces of testimony together and they spell tax discrepancy.

Multiply Sangamon County's loose and inefficient assessment system by the number of counties in Illinois and you have the answer to why the State Revenue Department has had to boost the multiplier this year.

Maybe the state's overly complicated Revenue Article is partly to blame for the taxing mess, but so are the county governments. County officials have been screaming for more "home rule" for decades, yet when they are given authority they too often fail to use it.

Sangamon County, for instance, could have had a supervisor of assessments a couple of years ago who would have had the authority to try to equalize Sangamon County's taxes, but the board of supervisors ignored this move toward efficiency. A supervisor was not appointed.

City Corporation Counsel Ines Hoffmann informed the public how bad our tax discrepancies were last year when she found, in checking the sale of 1,201 sales of property, that properties in Springfield city limits were assessed at 12.48 per cent of their true value while properties in Woodside and Springfield townships, both outside city limits, were assessed at a little over 7 per cent of their true sale value.

In other words, the same type of home or commercial property assessed at $10,000 inside the city was assessed at only $6,000 in Woodside or Springfield townships.

The Peoria Journal Star reports a similar mess for Peoria County. Property outside Peoria is assessed an average of 31 per cent of full value, while property in the city is assessed at 55 per cent.

It is true, as Overaker and Mendenhall asserted, that hiking the tax multiplier would be unfair to those whose properties are already over-taxed, particularly owners of commercial property inside the city limits of Springfield.

But the Sangamon County board of supervisors and other county officials charged with managing the tax system should have acted a long time ago to straighten out this mess. But the deadheadedness that has become a habit in county government prevailed and our tax discrepancies went from bad to worse.

Passage of the law by the General Assembly this year to require county governments to equalize township taxes may result in a more equitable situation in the future, but it will take two or three years for that law to become fully operative

The Revenue Department's move to hike the tax multiplier should be a warning to county governments, including Sangamon County, to get off their hands and start using their authority. Truly equalized taxes would give both the state and local governments enough revenue.

• Illinois State Journal, Springfield, Dec. 10, 1957.

Page 6 / Illinois Municipal Review / January