{"id":1496,"date":"2011-10-24T08:56:10","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T13:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2011-10-24T08:56:10","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T13:56:10","slug":"batesline-tulsa-county-excise-board-rubber-stamping-property-tax-hikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2011\/10\/24\/batesline-tulsa-county-excise-board-rubber-stamping-property-tax-hikes\/","title":{"rendered":"BatesLine: Tulsa County Excise Board Rubber-stamping Property Tax Hikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tulsa blogger Michael Bates has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.batesline.com\/archives\/2011\/10\/excise-board-rubber-stamps-prope.html\">follow-up<\/a> to last week\u2019s Tulsa County Excise Board meeting, which was upended when a member questioned the purpose of the board\u2019s existence.<\/p><p>Bates writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The excise board is supposed to analyze the request and determine its validity before approving it, but according to (Tulsa County Assessor Ken) Yazel, the Tulsa County Excise Board has been rubber-stamping requests, resulting in a property tax increase for all Tulsa County property owners once again this year, without any vote of the people.<\/p><\/blockquote><p><!--more-->According to Bates, the City of Tulsa\u2019s property tax increase request includes the final payment of the Great Plains Airlines settlement, which was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tulsaworld.com\/news\/article.aspx?subjectid=334&articleid=20111014_11_A1_TheOkl101931\">thrown out<\/a> by the Oklahoma Supreme Court a week prior. Yazel pointed this out to the board at the Oct. 19 meeting, Bates writes, but the board approved the request without any amendments.<\/p><p>Board member Ted Kachel made a motion to delay the decision, and questioned the Excise Board\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhy have an Excise Board in place if we don\u2019t have some say about the amount of taxes people are paying?\u201d Kachel asked, according to a <em>Tulsa World<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tulsaworld.com\/news\/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20111020_11_0_Alongt489908&rss_lnk=16\">report<\/a>. \u201cI just don\u2019t understand why we have this meeting at all.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote><p>The Excise Board sets millage rates \u2014 a tax rate applied to net assessed property value \u2014 each year. The board eventually voted 2-1 to approve the new millage rates, but Kachel questioned whether the board had the right to adjust fixed levies approved by voters.<\/p><p>The board\u2019s Fiscal Officer, Jim Smith, said he didn\u2019t think the board could change a rate determined by a vote of the people, but deffered to Tulsa County Assistant Distruct Attorney Andrea Wyrick, the <em>World<\/em> wrote.<\/p><p>Wyrick\u2019s first reaction, according to the <em>World<\/em>: \u201cThe board did not have such power.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tulsa blogger Michael Bates has a follow-up to last week\u2019s Tulsa County Excise Board meeting, which was upended when a member questioned the purpose of the board\u2019s existence.Bates writes: The excise board is supposed to analyze the request and determine its validity before approving it, but according to (Tulsa County Assessor Ken) Yazel, the Tulsa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[140,141,142,136],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1504,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}