County assessors: No way to implement property tax ballot initiative

JACKSON — Although momentum across the state is gaining for a ballot initiative that would cut residential property taxes in half, implementing the exemption might not be possible.

“As of right now, no, we could not administer the initiative,” Wyoming County Assessors Association President Melissa Shinkle said.

Shinkle is in her second term as the Teton County assessor, and she previously worked in the County Clerk’s Office for two decades. She and her colleagues do not see a path forward for the initiative because the bureaucratic process isn’t established.

She said assessors are one of the only elected offices that are directly regulated by other agencies in the state — the Department of Revenue and the State Board of Equalization. Wyoming Statutes give the Department of Revenue the authority to develop rules and policies for assessors to follow, and the Board of Equalization must review whether the properties are being assessed at fair market value.

The Wyoming Constitution lays out the fair market value requirement.

But there are no rules or amendments to the laws that would give assessors direction on how to implement a 50% exemption to residential homeowners in the state.

“There is nothing in the rules as of yet,” Shinkle said. “Our software programs certainly can’t do anything with that as of yet.”

The initiative is in the petitioning stage of the process, and registered voters’ signatures are being collected across the state to get it onto the 2024 ballot. Nearly 30,000 in total are needed and must be certified before the ballot language can be developed and voters actually get to fill in “yes” or “no.”

If enough “yes” votes are garnered in the 2024 election, then the law would go into effect 90 days after results of the election were certified. This would only give the Legislature and state agencies three months to prepare for the changes.