When property values decline and property taxes rise, is there something out of whack?

No, there isn’t. What we’re seeing in Linn County is the result of how Measure 50 and the real estate market have worked in relation to each other since the 1990s.

In 1997, Measure 50, the legislature’s rewrite of Bill Sizemore’s Measure 47, reduced every private property’s assessed tax value to 10 percent below what it had been the year before.

The same measure also limited any increase in assessed value to 3 percent per year. Market values, though, generally increased faster.

So after a few years, the prices that houses and similar properties were fetching on the market were a lot higher than the taxable amounts shown by the county.

This year the ratio of taxable to market value of Linn County residential property is still about 69 percent, meaning that market values are about 31 percent higher than taxable amounts.

Measure 50 also set permanent tax rates, which are applied against the assessed value. Result: As the tax value rises 3 percent a year, your tax bill goes up the same, even as the higher real market values decline.

One of these years, assessed and market value may meet, but it hasn’t happened yet and, considering the spread, probably won’t for a while. (hh)