Suit asks that Board of Equalization be forced to fix Jackson County assessments
Legal Aid of Western Missouri is suing the Jackson County Board of Equalization on behalf of low-income, minority homeowners, arguing that they were unfairly hit with large assessment increases last year that resulted in onerous property tax bills.
The suit, filed on New Year’s Eve, asks that a judge force the board to undo the alleged inequities, something the three-member panel has refused to do, despite repeated requests from Legal Aid and others.
It is the second suit of its kind filed recently in Jackson County Circuit Court. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Jackson County government and assessment department director Gail McCann Beatty last month, claiming the 2019 assessment process violated the federal Fair Housing Act.
That lawsuit contended that predominantly white areas got more favorable treatment than the four majority minority neighborhoods the ACLU is representing.
Both actions stem from Beatty’s decision to cap increased assessments at 14.9 percent in some neighborhoods, but not others.
Assessments rose in 2019 on more than 80 percent of all Jackson County residential properties, some far more than others.
State law requires that assessors perform physical inspections of homes and business buildings when their values go up 15 percent or more. About a third of Jackson County properties fit that description when assessment notices went out in late May, with assessments on some homes going up as much as 600 percent, the new lawsuit said.
Jackson County says it doesn’t have the personnel to visit each house where the assessment went up by 15 percent. But Beatty ran out of time to even perform desktop inspections by consulting photos on Google Street View. Instead, she capped increases at 14.9 percent for many properties.
Beatty, who is African-American, has said that it was “a coincidence of the process” that mostly-white neighborhoods were more likely to benefit from the cap than areas where most of the homeowners are minorities.
Intentional or not, Legal Aid attorneys say the outcome resulted “in a disproportionate tax burden on Jackson County’s poorest citizens residing in the county’s majority-minority neighborhoods.”
The suit’s plaintiffs include three elderly taxpayers on fixed incomes as well as the Westside Neighborhood Association and the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council.
The Board of Equalization, which is independent of county government, has been hearing appeals from thousands of property owners who say their assessments were set too high and, therefore, face big increases in their property taxes.
Oftentimes, home owners who show up to appeals hearings walk away satisfied. The board frequently lowers values when presented with even minimal evidence to support the decrease.
But thousands more appeals are still to be heard, and taxes were due Dec. 31. Legal Aid further argues in the lawsuit that many home owners did not appeal their assessments because they were unfamiliar with the process, had a language barrier or never received a notice of the increase until their tax bill came in November.
Those taxpayers shouldn’t have to shoulder a bigger burden because of that, Legal Aid asserts, when the 14.9 percent cap had such a discriminatory affect.
Legal Aid said the board has been asked at least six times to consider setting some kind of a limit on assessments in areas that did not benefit from the 14.9 percent cap. But the board has taken no action.
It has not yet responded in court and wouldn’t be expected to this soon after the suit was filed. The ACLU action, meanwhile, is not set for its first case management hearing until April 6, records show.
