Judge says Jackson County needs to roll back property valuations, agreeing with state order
Jackson County has lost the lawsuit it filed challenging a State Tax Commission order to reduce property values on most parcels that saw double-digit increases in their 2023 reassessments.
The tax commission said rollbacks on the county’s valuations were necessary mostly because the county failed to properly notify taxpayers of those increases to give them adequate time to challenge those hikes. The judge in the case agreed.
What the ruling means to individual taxpayers in practical terms is still unclear. The county has previously said that tax refunds were unlikely.
Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr., who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, did not comment. But his administration did not criticize or overtly object to the ruling in a news release that was issued Tuesday afternoon.
Instead, the county said it “acknowledges” the ruling and said the tax commission’s rollback had previously been ruled “unenforceable in a separate proceeding.”
The county statement made no mention of an appeal. But this year’s chairman of the Jackson County Legislature, DaRon McGee, predicted that White is almost sure to fight the judge’s ruling.
“I expect this administration will appeal this decision,” McGee said in a news release. “It’s time for the County Executive to do the right thing and follow the law.”
Legislators Manny Abarca and Sean Smith issued separate written statements Tuesday. They each called on McGee to schedule a special session of the county legislature to consider what steps the county should take in response to the 38-page ruling written by Senior Judge Jacqueline A. Cook in Jackson County Circuit Court.
Abarca laid the blame for the court ruling on what he believes is White’s mishandling of the 2023 reassessment process and refusal to acknowledge that there were errors in the process.
“The County Executive’s repeated missteps, from mismanaging the property assessment process to failing to provide clear, honest communication with residents, have eroded public trust,” Abarca said.
Smith called the court decision “a massive win for taxpayers and residents of Jackson County.” He also laid the blame on White for the “massive issues” that led to big increases in property values for three-fourths of county taxpayers.
Judge faults process
Both have previously said the tax commission was right to order a rollback in assessed values due to errors in the process.
The case went to trial in late January. Both sides then filed legal briefs to help inform the judge’s final decision, which she handed down on Monday.
The county is currently in the process of setting property values for the 2025 reassessment cycle. Property values in Missouri are set for tax purposes every other year.
Cook did not dispute whether the county overstated the real estate values in 2023 except that the assessment department “improperly used some parcel by parcel reviews that were attenuated from the 2023 real property assessments.”
On Tuesday afternoon, the county’s lawyers were still trying to ascertain what Cook was getting at with that confusing sentence.
In a statement, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said “the ruling affirms that Jackson County violated state law by illegally inflating property assessments, leading to undue tax burdens on residents.”
But Cook’s ruling is far less forthright.
Late notice of hikes
She focuses very little of her concerns on the accuracy of the values or how they were set. Rather, her ruling focuses more on how the tax commission was right in finding flaws in the county’s process of notifying property owners of those higher values.
She said the county failed to provide owners with adequate time to ask for further interior inspections once they got their assessment notices. Many didn’t arrive in taxpayers’ mailboxes until June of 2023, mere weeks before the July 10 deadline to file an appeal.
The county had hoped to have all notices out in April. Had that happened, taxpayers might have had more time to prove that their homes were worth less than the county said they were, the tax commission said.
Cook ruled that the county failed to impress upon taxpayers that they had a right to ask for interior inspections that might have helped get a lower assessed value.
“These errors compounded to create a 2023 Jackson County real property tax assessment which resulted in mistaken or erroneous assessments and taxes levied or paid in 2023,” Cook wrote.
Money back for taxpayers?
Her decision upheld the order that the commission issued last August calling on the county to cap property reassessment increases on about 200,000 of the 238,000 real estate parcels whose values increased more than 15% during the 2023 reassessment cycle.
The county has about 300,000 real estate parcels. Some saw increases lower than 15%, and some fell in value.
But the ruling does not state what this might mean to individual taxpayers. The taxes they paid at the end of 2023 and 2024 based on those values have already been budgeted and largely spent by the cities, school districts and a myriad of other smaller taxing districts.
“We understand this ruling has caused confusion and concern,” Jackson County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty said in a prepared statement.
The same news release in which her quote was included said that rolling back values to comply with the tax commission order “would have significant and unequal consequences” for taxpayers.
“Revisiting assessments now could cause some residents, particularly those in neighborhoods that haven’t appreciated as rapidly, to pay more in taxes than the actual market value of their homes would justify.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 6:34 PM.
