Mixed reaction to SB 346

The passage of Senate Bill 346 has elicited strong reactions over on the AJC’s “Gold Dome Live” blog. Some readers are thrilled about the bill; some see it as useless. Here’s a sampling:

Munroe Burbank:  "This is not good, and has absolutely nothing to do with lowering taxes. Sure, these days, assessments probably show a downward trend because of housing market crisis, but this won’t last forever. I was assessed every 3 – 4 years from 1996 – 2006, and each time my taxes went up because the value of my property went up. Once the economy is back on its feet and real estate values rebound, this yearly assessment will amount to an annual property tax increase."

RSJ:  “SB346 is a very good piece of legislation. It adds transparency to the assessment process and removes the need for filing a return to initiate an assessment appeal. Prior to this law, if the County elected not to send a taxpayer an assessment notice, the taxpayer had no appeal remedy for the current years’ assessment, unless they went to the County between Jan and March or April and filed a form called a real property tax return. Guess what – 99% of the citizens of this state had no idea that this was the process and thus when their tax bill came in the mail, there was no recourse. Now, at least the taxpayer will be formally notified each and every year what their assessment will be and it will be up to them to take action as to whether or not they feel an appeal is warranted. SB346 has some components that are not perfect but, overall, it is a solid example of our elected offficials acting as good legislators instead of just good politicians.”

“None Supporter of SB346”:  “This legislation is a tool to force county assessors [sic] office to go broke so that the state can eliminate property taxes in each county, take over pushing for a state sales tax increase so that they control how much money goes to each county. Remeber [sic] folks, the propery [sic] tax bill you now pay is arrived at the amount of dollars it takes to run your county divided by the total assessment of the county. Now, take that away and you sales taxes will surely skyrocket! Then the political game of who and what county receives the sales tax collected, oh, wait, the state still owes the counties of Georgia millions of collected sales taxes in error already, cough up please Mr. Sonny.”

Read all the comments for yourself here.