Throughout, the county commission has nothing to do with the process. Commissioners appoint the tax assessors, but they cannot remove them except for due cause. Once values are established, a tax digest is prepared and forwarded to the state for approval. When the state finally approves the digest, the county commission, school board and city councils do their job of levying taxes based on the approved digest. Before doing that they are required to have hearings and adopt the budget.
Taxpayers have their opportunity here to make their wishes known about county programs.
Maybe the answer to some of the problems lies in education. Maybe the county commissioners should hold meetings county-wide and make sure everyone understands that there are two issues in question, as well as who is responsible for each. It seems that the major concern is over the assessment of property. As long as the state refuses to finance education from its broad tax base and requires counties to match their assessments with the state-determined value, we will have problems and misunderstandings and the legislature will continue to try to pass piecemeal laws to correct problems. In lieu of the current pseudo-solutions being proposed, maybe we should all try to work together, to clean up the mess.