Wyo Governor singles out two state officials for role in costly decision

by Phil Noble, Cowboy State Free Press Bureau Chief

CHEYENNE–Using the forum of an address to the Wyoming Realtors Association, which had invited him to give an overview of the legislature’s work, Gov. Dave Freudenthal noted that two state officials were responsible for a property tax ruling that has cost local economic development agencies and developers across the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Referring to it as that “weirdness that came out of the county assessors in Park County,” Freudenthal went on to say that “Marvin Applequist (Administrator of the Dept. of Revenue’s Property Tax division) and Tom Roberts (Chairman of the Wyoming Board of Equalization, which hears tax appeals) got together and did this without rulemaking.”

The decision to which Freudenthal referred is one adopted by several Wyoming county assessors to tax property which is awaiting use for economic development–land and improvements such as the business park in Cheyenne that is awaiting the building of the world’s largest supercomputer by the National Science Foundation.

That ruling by the county assessors has cost Cheyenne LEADS, it’s local economic development agency, some $75,000 a year in property taxes. “The thing that worries me about the way they’ve done this is the property for local economic development groups is they’re going to hold off (buying land or improvements for economic development),” Freudenthal said.

Freudenthal noted in his speech the impact on local economic development agencies like LEADS, saying in a sarcastic tone, “if you think your government isn’t sometimes a well oiled machine you’ve got another think coming.”

“We take money out of the Business Ready Communities (fund, which provides money to economic development activities around the state) and they buy land and then comes the Department of Revenue which taxes them to death,” Freudenthal said.

A bill now before the legislature would remedy that problem, but a similar bill died last year in the Senate Revenue committee after its chairman, Sen. John Schiffer, R-Sheridan/Johnson counties, spoke against it and persuaded his collegues to kill the bill. It received only one favorable vote in the committee hearing last year.

This year’s bill, HB 44, entitled “Taxation of property used for economic development,” was changed by its sponsors in an effort to be more palatable to the Senate.

Another bill, HB 70, “Vacant land,” would reverse the so-called Park County decision by the Board of Equalization.