What the South Dakota media will cover in the upcoming legislative session is anyone's guess. If the media cover the most contentious issue that draws the most attention from the legislators then property taxes will lead the coverage. Faithful legislature watchers will recall that last year there were various proposals to reform the state's property tax method. An interim study group analyzed the situation and released this report. The short hand, as I understand it, is that the study group ended up endorsing something similar to SB 173 from last year, which I wrote about here last February. This is not altogether surprising as Sen. Dave Knudson and Rep. Larry Rhoden chaired the study group and were chief proponents of SB 173.
The complaint last year about SB 173 is that it was taking three fictitious numbers and multiplying them together to get an "accurate" assessment of property value. Under the current proposal instead of asking farmers to report the rent value of their land, SDSU would be commissioned to come up with a number. That is an improvement on last year's bill, yet one wonder why the legislature cannot simply empower the county assessors, whose job is to assess land value, to use their professional training and come up with a number for tax purposes. Further, that value will still be multiplied by factor numbers completely made up by the legislature.
The new bill will likely have plentiful initial support. One will want to watch how the various farm groups react to the bill as it is their land that is most effected by the proposal. Other property tax reform bill are going to be offered. So watch for more reporting on this complex but highly important issue.
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