Torches and pitchforks turn into petitions

Listening to a property-tax hearing at the Legislature the other day, I half-jokingly called it a "torches and pitchforks crowd."

It hasn't come to that yet. Mainly because they'd have to leave their bonfires and farm implements outside the Legislative Building.

If I were a legislator, though, I wouldn't keep testing their patience, because it'll soon turn into a "petitions and signatures" crowd. Then Nevada voters will be asked something like, "How little would you like to pay in taxes?"

Yeah, give 'em a chance to take out their wrath at the ballot box. That's a good idea.

People tend to get a little testy when they think they might lose their homes.

Ask the people in New London, Conn., where city government is trying to condemn some houses to make way for a hotel-office complex.

Those folks have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight the patently absurd idea - absurd to anybody except a bureaucrat or government official who gets paid with tax dollars - that eminent domain should be used to hand a piece of property from one private owner to another.

One of the homeowners in the lawsuit, Susette Kelo, had bought and restored a rundown home. She was told in November 2000 by local officials her home was condemned, and ordered to vacate within 90 days. She went to court and has been able to remain in the home while the case is being appealed.

City officials in this and 10,000 other cases argue they can use the power of eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another (at a fair-market price) because it's in the public's interest. Not for streets or sewer lines or a fire station, but for the benefit of a developer - and the prospect of bringing in more tax dollars.

"The attitude behind these seizures was epitomized by a Lancaster, Calif., city attorney explaining why a 99¢ Only store should be condemned to make way for a Costco: '99 Cents produces less than $40,000 (a year) in sales taxes, and Costco was producing more than $400,000. You tell me which was more important?'" according to Ayn Rand Institute writers Larry Salzman and Alex Epstein.

The question being begged here, of course, is: But what if they don't want to sell?

That's in essence the same question being asked by the people who have been bending the ears of Nevada lawmakers over escalating property taxes.

The legislators have heard over and over how taxes on this property have gone up 400 percent, or how taxes on that property now cost nearly as much annually as the land was purchased for in the first place.

Yes, that house they bought for $180,000 is now worth $550,000. But they don't want to sell. They want to go on living right there - many of them in retirement - but the property-tax bill is more than they can handle.

Officials aren't knocking on their doors and evicting them in 90 days. No, it's more insidious than that. They're working in the confines of a system that says if your neighbor's house sells for $550,000, then we get to tax your house at $550,000.

The irony is that Incline Village residents have been screaming about the problem for years, but nobody cared. They're all a bunch of billionaires, right? They can afford to pay whatever taxes are assessed.

Now, though, the peasants who don't live in castles are waking up to property-tax inflation. They're wondering where all that money is going.

Well, most of it goes to school districts and local governments. Whenever somebody asks why they don't simply lower the tax rates, the response so far has been that it would be too difficult.

Here's what they really mean: It would be too difficult to raise the taxes again if real estate values suddenly plummeted in Nevada. It would mean they might face an angry public again if they weren't able to cut their own budgets correspondingly and wanted to dig back into taxpayers' pockets.

It all sounds a lot like the arguments for not giving back at least $300 million of the state's surplus, created by record-setting tax increases in 2003. They have our money, and they want to spend it.

Gov. Kenny Guinn heard the rumblings from the masses. So have state legislators and local governments.

I say leave your pitchforks and torches at home for now. But you might want to limber up your petition-signing hand.

n Barry Smith is editor of the Nevada Appeal. Contact him at editor@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1221.