Shock waves are being felt throughout Fulton County after the state Department of Revenue surprisingly rejected the tax digest of Georgia’s most populous county. The decision means that tax bills sent to residents will be delayed until sometime in November. The state’s finding that county leaders did not have the authority to freeze residential values at 2016 levels is stressful to cities and school systems within the county– and delivers a blow to some of them when it comes to paying employees and bills.
Gabe Sterling, a Sandy Springs City Councilman running as a Republican for the Fulton County Commission chairmanship in a Nov. 7 special election, notes that a judge could rule in a Nov. 3 hearing that the county could correct the current digest, use the 2017 assessments instead, or restart the assessment process with a new tax digest.
“This has caused chaos,” Sterling declares. In fact, this “chaos” may be giving a boost to his uphill chairmanship campaign. Sterling has long advocated for a homestead exemption that would cap the amount property assessments could increase each year.
Rob Pitts, a veteran Democrat politico running against Sterling for the Fulton chairmanship, charged that the assessment freeze was a “knee-jerk political reaction” to public outrage. He says the law used by Fulton commissioners as the legal basis for the freeze was “suspect” and that assessors should have just taken extra time to correct mistakes. Pitts proposes to phase in the increases to the assessments, assuming that’s legal.
Democrat Keisha Waites, a third, long-shot candidate for the chairmanship, vaguely says should would leverage her relationships with state legislators to work on Fulton County tax reform.
