Opinion No. (1979)

REQUESTED BY: Dear Senator DeCamp:

In your letter of April 30th you take note of a newspaper article which reports that sales assessment ratios compiled by the Tax Commissioner show that real estate throughout the state was assessed at only about half the 35% of actual values specified by law. You ask a number of questions about the implications of this.

You ask whether this raises constitutional problems about the distribution of the Personal Property Tax Relief Fund. Your analysis is that the low assessment of real estate resulted in a higher mill levy. This, in turn, resulted in an…