Why Should Delaware Care?
New Castle County officials will soon be able to begin reviewing the reassessment results of some of the most contentious commercial properties in the county after state lawmakers on Thursday passed legislation enabling them to do so. The bill was scrutinized by some Republicans as being another rushed through quick fix, but Democrats say they needed to act quickly.
The Delaware legislature passed one half of a two-bill package Thursday that would give New Castle County new authority to review the results of its much maligned property reassessment.
That first bill, Senate Bill 228, gives New Castle County the ability to temporarily expand the authority of its Office of Finance to conduct “quality control” reviews of its commercial property assessments.
Rep. Cyndie Romer (D-Newark), the House sponsor of SB 228, said she saw an unwillingness from New Castle County to investigate “clear outliers” after Delaware’s first-in-a-generation property reassessment. Her legislation is meant to explicitly give county officials the authority to look into commercial properties that were seemingly undervalued.
But House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover) said concerns about ensuring “due process” for business owners stopped lawmakers from holding a vote on the second bill, Senate Bill 230, which would give New Castle County officials the power to subpoena certain businesses for records showing the income earned from their properties.
With the General Assembly beginning its six-week break to scrutinize and amend Gov. Matt Meyer’s proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year, the New Castle County subpoena bill will not be voted on until at least mid-March.
Despite this delay, Harris said New Castle County officials told her they can begin their property review, even without the codified ability to subpoena business records.
“Consulting with New Castle County, they determined that as long as [Senate Bill] 228 was run, they could get started,” Harris said.
A spokesperson for New Castle County confirmed as much on Friday afternoon, telling Spotlight Delaware that once Meyer signs SB 228 into law, county officials can begin the process of searching for an outside vendor to complete the quality control review.
A spokesperson for Meyer’s office did not immediately respond Friday evening to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment.
The two-bill assessment review package had been the subject of Republican scrutiny when it was first introduced in the Senate, largely over warnings it was being needlessly rushed.
Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek Valley) echoed those sentiments during the House floor vote Thursday evening.
After conducting a series of joint committee hearings to investigate exactly what went wrong during Delaware’s first-in-a-generation property reassessment, Smith said he had hoped lawmakers would take more time to craft legislation.
“This frustration is not with anyone in this chamber,” Smith said. “It’s more frustration toward folks across the way in the other chamber. But one thing we talked about in the committee, and ended on, is that we were going to be more methodical of our approach and not rush things.”
But Romer rebuffed these claims. She said that finding ways to review property assessments has been a “central topic” throughout the series of investigative committee hearings.
“If you’ve been following along, this has come up time and again in the committee meetings,” she said. “And the decision is, ‘We must act now.’”
While SB 228 and SB 230 mark the first pieces of reassessment legislation to follow the joint committee, Romer also told Spotlight Delaware that a separate package of bills is being developed by committee members.
Karl Baker contributed to this report.