Opinion ID: 852846
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Special laws under Article IV, Section 23

Text: Plaintiffs contend these laws also violate Article IV, Section 23, which requires that where a general law can be made applicable, all laws shall be general, and of uniform operation throughout the State. As we held in Kimsey, under Section 23, a law limited to a given county is prohibited unless there are inherent characteristics of the affected locale that justify local legislation. Kimsey, 781 N.E.2d at 692. If the affected county reflects unique circumstances that rationally justify the legislation, then a general law is not applicable elsewhere and Section 23 is not violated. Id. The State points to the long and tortured history of property taxation in Lake County, described in Matonovich v. State Bd. of Tax Comm'rs, 705 N.E.2d 1093, 1095 (Ind. Tax Ct.1999) as an endemic problem with the uniformity of assessments within classes of property. As explained above, if some parts of a county significantly underassess properties compared to the assessed valuations placed on similar properties elsewhere, the effect is to shift tax burdens from the underassessed properties. Indeed, that was the complaint of the town of St. John, which is in Lake County, that led to the initial holding that the then-prevailing true tax value system of assessment did not produce a uniform and equal method of assessment in violation of Article X, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution. Boehm v. Town of St. John, 675 N.E.2d 318, 324 (Ind.1996). Until 2001, the State Tax Board had the functions of both the Board of Tax Review and the DLGF. In 1998, the State Board had concluded, after public hearings, that widespread underassessment in various units of Lake County required ordering a countywide reassessment, and had employed a private contractor to reassess all property in Lake County. Though noting the State Board's finding that there was a widespread recognition that an assessment problem exists in Lake County, the Tax Court concluded that the Board had no authority to employ a private firm to perform the reassessment. Matonovich, 705 N.E.2d at 1098. In response to that decision, the General Assembly promptly granted the Board the authority the Tax Court found lacking by enacting the statutes Plaintiffs challenge in this case. We thus have administrative findings, judicial findings, and legislative action all pointing to a unique circumstance created by uneven assessment practices in various parts of Lake County. And, as Plaintiffs point out, a few huge industrial complexes in Lake County constitute significant percentages of all taxable property in some taxing districts, a situation not faced in any other county, and requiring great care in valuing such a dominant asset of unique kind and character for which there is no ready market comparable to that for residential housing. We are directed to no comparable set of circumstances in any other county producing such widespread tax inequities and unusual issues of valuation. These conditions readily justify local legislation to deal with a reassessment problem of a scale and complexity not found elsewhere in the state.