TAX NEWS - June 2010

Property Appraiser appeals for tax relief

Santa Rosa County's Property Appraiser wants tax relief this year for individuals and businesses affected by the oil spill.

But Greg Brown does not want to cause problems for school boards, cities or county government budgets when property values are decreased to obtain that relief. Therefore, he has been pushing since May for a special session of the state legislature as soon as possible to not only give the authority to local property appraisers to lower property values now, but also to have the state bill British Petroleum (BP) now for the losses in property tax resulting from the Gulf oil spill.

Brown said he believes it is a crucial step in recovery of the Gulf Coast to have that special session.

"I contacted people in Tallahassee for weeks about having a special session," Brown said last weekend. "Now, Chris Jones, property appraiser of Escambia County, has joined me in the push. Chris and I traveled to Tallahassee to meet with some of the governor's cabinet to talk about the need for a special session. Now, Pete Smith, Okaloosa Property Appraiser, has joined us in pushing for the special session."

As reported in Gulf Breeze News last week, Brown and Jones sent a joint letter June 2 to Gov. Charlie Crist, Speaker of the Florida House Larry Cretul, and Senate President Jeff Atwater asking for either an executive order for immediate tax relief for loss of property values along the Gulf Coast or a special session of the Florida legislature.

"The time for wait-and-see methodology is over," Brown said. "If we don't take quick action now, we will have reaction like we had after Hurricane Ivan. We can see what kind of problems that caused."

Brown also sent a letter June 10 to Alex Sink, Florida's Chief Financial Officer, pointing out reasons for a special session now.

In the letter, Brown wrote: "Should there be a continued decline in the stock value of BP (as being speculated by Matt Simmons in 'Fortune Online') or a declared bankruptcy, then this will leave all of the citizens of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana with the burden of clean-up and loss in revenues.

"Without BP's financial ability to pay for the clean-up and loss of revenue claims, our state will be faced with an unbelievable and impossible task of paying for the enormous catastrophic environmental oil spill for years to come. This will also cause the residents of the affected counties to face even more hardships by possibly having to pay for the cleanup or deal with the environmental cleanup individually. The counties may lose the ability to pay for adequate services to its citizens by being overwhelmed with cost of cleanup, and they will be forced to pass enormous costs to their citizens through tax increases."

Brown said under existing law none of the loss in property values would show until the 2011 tax rolls.

"Only with the authority from the legislature can we decrease the property values and give some property tax relief this year for people who own property or businesses along the Gulf Coast," Brown told Gulf Breeze News.

"But at the same time, we don't want to hurt school boards and other governments who depend on those property taxes in their budgets. So we also need the state legislature to bill BP now for those losses so those budgets will not be harmed."