Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware senators on Wednesday debated legislation that would give New Castle County more ways to scrutinize the results of its much-maligned property reassessment process. The results of that process last year shifted the overall tax burden away from business properties and toward residences.
Delaware’s Senate Democrats want to expedite the passage of two bills that would give New Castle County new authority to review the results of its much maligned property reassessment.
They say that the pieces of legislation, introduced late on Tuesday, need to become law soon so that county officials can start an investigation into the true value of certain business properties that many suspect were drastically undervalued in reassessment results released last year.
But Senate Republicans warn that the bills are being needlessly rushed, risking unintended consequences.
The debate played out on Wednesday during a Senate Executive Committee hearing that turned tense at times with Republicans repeatedly questioning why the process shouldn’t be slowed to give their side a chance to offer amendments on the bills.
“What I’d like is a better understanding as to why? Why?” asked State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-Dover South) during the meeting that highlighted the geographical divide in the legislature as much as its partisan divide.
In response, Senate President Pro Tem David Sokola – a Newark Democrat – said his party has often agreed to expedite Republican-requested legislative changes to the charters of downstate cities and towns.
When Buckson began to speak again, Sokola interjected stating, “Do you have to respond to everything?”
It was a snippy exchange between two typically congenial senators that highlighted the strong feelings held by many in Delaware over a first-in-a-generation reassessment process that last year caused lawmakers’ inboxes to fill up with angry messages.
In all, the reassessment results shifted the overall tax burden in New Castle County away from business properties and toward residences. The shift happened, in part, because Wilmington’s downtown business core has not thrived during post-pandemic years like it had in previous decades.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, a majority of the Senate Executive Committee passed the bills out of committee.
The full Senate is scheduled to consider them on Thursday afternoon.
Bills seek to ensure ‘quality control’
The two bills — Senate Bill 228 and 229 brought by State Sens. Dan Cruce (D-Wilmington) and Spiros Mantzavinos (D-Elsmere) — collectively would give New Castle County the ability to temporarily expand the authority of its Office of Finance to conduct “quality control” reviews of its property assessments.
Potentially under review would be commercial properties that appear to have been undervalued and residential properties whose assessment were the result of an explicit clerical or mathematical error.
As part of their new review authority, county officials would also have the ability to subpoena certain business for records showing the income earned from their properties.
The bills mark the culmination of a high-profile and months-long investigation conducted by state lawmakers last fall into the county’s reassessment process. The investigation included testimony during five public hearings from county officials, from business property owners, and from the company contracted to conduct the reassessment, Tyler Technologies.
While much of the public outrage has focused on spikes in residential property bills, lawmakers also discussed during one hearing last month how to ease any undo burdens from the assessment placed on small businesses.
On Wednesday, Cruce defended his legislation, in part, by also pointing to difficulties that some small businesses owners face. He described a modest barbershop in the Bellefonte community whose property he claimed had been over-assessed, even as the tax bills for nearby, larger businesses had dropped.
He said he had asked Tyler Technologies in past months for answers about such incongruities but received little useful information.
“We received answers that, at least from my perception, didn’t meet muster,” Cruce said on Wednesday.
Cruce asserted that his and Mantzavinos’s bills will now allow the county to independently investigate why certain property assessments don’t “seem fair.”
While Cruce acknowledged that the legislation is scheduled to move quickly through the statehouse, he asserted that his frustrated constituents believe the state has acted too slowly in response to perceived problems with the county reassessment.
Following the comments, Senate Minority Leader Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View) noted that he had only seen the Democrats’ bills hours earlier because they had been introduced late the night before. Still, from what he had seen, he suggested the legislation could hurt businesses, saying they send “a mixed message to our business community.”
In response to such criticisms, Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend said later during the committee meeting that giving the county the authority to investigate individual property assessments will ensure the property tax system is accurate.
“Accuracy in the system is to the benefit of everyone, and if there are inaccuracies right now, it means there are some people who are underpaying and some people are overpaying,” he said.