Marylanders for Fair Property Taxation

516 Walters Mill Road Forest Hill, Maryland 21050-1428 (410) 879-7993
E-mail mdfairtax@juno.com www.marylandersforfairpropertytaxation.com

January 29, 2011

Opposition to SB 55 – Property Tax Assessment Appeals Boards – Membership

Budget and Taxation Chairman Kasemeyer and Committee members

On February 2, 2011 SB 55 – Property Tax Assessment Appeals Boards – Membership --

a bill to increase from 1 to 3 the number of alternate members of the Property Tax Assessment
Appeal Boards for certain counties will be heard before your committee. We strongly oppose this
proposed legislation. This proposal apparently is an attempt to solve a growing problem of some
boards not being able to meet the appeals hearing load placed before them. It is a band-aid approach
of treating the symptoms rather than the problem. The problem is the archaic, biased, inequitable,
highly subjective, non-uniform, unfair, assessment system that has created 15,000 to 19,000 second
level appeals each year for the past two years. This high number of appeals has created an
unmanageable backlog in the hearing process in some counties. We ask that you take a hard and
favorable look at the Task Force bill that will be coming before you this session that could address
and eliminate the cause of these problems.

Unbelievably, in addition to the failure of the assessment system, the Property Tax
Assessment Appeals Board (PTAAB) law restricts the board members from working more than 6
hours per day or 30 hours per week. Change the damn law and you won’t need to hire more
people‼‼ This is nothing more than an empire building, government growing, power grabbing effort.
It is ludicrous to even think of increasing the size of this bureaucracy when we should be downsizing
or freezing hiring not increasing it.

How many of us would like to have a job limited to 6 hours a day and 30 hours per week.
When was the last time you put in that few working hours??? What happened to the 40-hour
workweek? Sign me up‼! I’ll take the job immediately.

The solution is simple. Change the law. Allow more hours. Board members would
probably welcome receiving the extra $25.00 per hour they are paid. Schedule hearings on
Saturdays if necessary just as SDAT does for assessor hearings to meet the workload as well
as for the convenience of the taxpayer for whom these “public servants” supposedly work.
Allow a change of venue for the taxpayer to have a hearing before an assigned alternate
county board or one of the taxpayer’s choice whose workload may be less burdened. It would
be no different from the Tax Court process where 5 judges hear cases from all 24 of the
State’s jurisdictions. Let’s use some common sense and utilize the resources from 24 Boards
with over 100 members we already have in existence to their full potential and maximum
efficiency.

We urge that you summarily reject and dismiss this misguided attempted to increase
government size when other remedies are readily available. Good management and business
practice dictates that a more efficient use of the existing resources should be exhausted
before any attempt is made to expand an entity that is not currently being used to its
maximum potential. Reject SB 55 with an unfavorable recommendation.

Roy Whiteley