The movie The Odyssey is being released next month, and that’s appropriate for the Jackson County assessment district because the county is truly between Scylla and Charybdis now. The reassessment process in Jackson County has been a disaster for over a decade now. The only thing I will say in defense of the county and the assessor’s office is that Jackson County was underassessed for a long time. (My explanation as to why that was can be found here.) The process to accurately assess property within Jackson County was never going to be easy or fun, but the county has failed at the overall process by any measure.
Jackson County has begun attempting to correct its poorly conducted reassessments in 2023 and 2025. It will do this by retroactively rolling back property assessments for some property owners, sending refunds to other taxpayers, and withholding future tax funds from other taxing entities, such as fire districts, to make up for the overpayments by taxpayers in 2023 and 2025. The county has to withhold future payments because counties collect all the property taxes within the county, but then distribute almost all of that money to other taxing districts. Jackson County does not have a large pot of its own money it can make amends from. Not surprisingly, some of those taxing entities are suing over the withholding of their future tax payments.
The problem is, those school districts and other taxing entities were not the ones who caused the problems in 2023 and 2025. They followed the rules, set their tax rates, received their tax money, and spent it. Now they are being told they have to give some of it back.
So, I understand the objections by the taxing districts, but I have much more sympathy for the taxpayers who were victimized by a poor process over the past few reassessments. The Jackson County assessor’s office, among other problems, failed to provide taxpayers with the rights of appeal and relief they were entitled to during the process. So, yes, some taxpayers were overcharged because they did not have their full opportunity to appeal their taxes.
In short, the new Jackson County leadership team deserves credit for changing course and finally trying to correct the problems and refund money to some taxpayers. I think the taxpayers deserve these refunds—and the entire process needs wholesale changes.
I have no idea how the courts will rule in this lawsuit. I’ll be following it closely. Hopefully this controversy and similar, recent issues in Platte County can lead to massive changes in how we conduct property reassessments in Missouri.
