Court Opinion

ID: 9862848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:19:53.069812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:36:27.704523
License: Public Domain

Beennan, J.
(concurring). Whether the failure to make assessments at true value is “due to the frailties of human nature” or other reasons, the day has certainly arrived when officials at all levels of the administrative process are utterly without a defense to continue the practice.
I fully agree that the dominant principle of assessment is “equality of treatment and burden”; but the statutory scheme contemplates the achievement of that equality through local assessments at true value, and the duty of assessors and those concerned with the revision function is to assess at true value. I recognize, as I did in joining with the Chief Justice in his dissent in Baldwin Construction Co. v. Essex County Board of Taxation, 16 N. J. 329, at page 346 et seq., that, in this case also, as a practical matter, it would be impossible without untoward results to enforce the true value statutes for the tax year 1950, here in question.
*224But the assessment process is an annual occurrence and that process is now in its initial stages for the tax year 1956. Whatever merit there may formerly have been in the excuse of assessment officers and county boards of taxation that inadequate personnel and insufficient financial support left them helpless to perform their statutory functions of making original assessments at true value, that excuse is now empty in light of the work of the Director of the Division of Taxation in collecting true value data in all the taxing districts of the State for the purpose of constructing a table of equalized valuations upon which state school aid is apportioned among the municipalities. N. J. S. A. 54:1-35.1 et seq. There is now a wealth of material in the Director’s files which local assessors and county boards of taxation may, and should, consult for leads as to the accuracy of local assessments in terms of true value. Any local assessor who does not consult that material as to his municipality in the preparation of his 1956 duplicates before their submission to the county board of taxation before January 10, 1956, and any county board of taxation which does not consult the material for the municipalities in its county before completing the revision of duplicates and returning them to the local assessors by May 1, 1956, certainly runs the risk of the well-founded suspicion that they have deliberately and consciously failed to perform their statutory function if it later develops that the duplicates reflect a general pattern of assessment at less than true value. True, the Director does not collect value data for every property but uses sampling techniques which are useful for application on a mass basis. We have recognized, however, that the goal of true value assessments for every property does not demand tailor-made appraisals, City of Passaic v. Passaic County Board of Taxation, 18 N. J. 371, 395 (1955). No one identified with the assessment process will deny that a substantial approximation of the true value standard can be reached if those charged with the statutory duty will only use the tools at hand and make a determined effort to accomplish the result. *225There are doubtless methods for doing the job superior to those employed by the Director, but at the least conscientious local assessors and county boards of taxation should be quick to avail themselves of the product of the Director’s labors to improve their own performance if other equally good or better material is not at hand.
I am certain also that many county boards of taxation have themselves collected much material to supplement the data collected by the Director. They must certainly be in a better position than in the past to check on the duplicates of delinquent local assessors which exhibit the failure of the assessors to do this sworn duty. If equality of local assessment and burden through assessments at true value is the objective, and definitely it is, it is not enough that the Director and the county boards of taxation may take steps to remove from office local assessors who “willfully or intentionally fail, neglect or refuse to comply with the constitution and laws of this State relating to the assessment and collection of taxes,” B. 8. 54:1-36, B. 8. 54:1-37, as amended by L. 1953, c. 51. The use of that sanction will not excuse the failure of the members of the county boards of taxation from consulting the material at hand to revise the duplicates to show assessments at true value, which it is their duty to do under B. 8. 54:A-47, as amended by L. 1947, c. 413.
And the Director himself has the responsibility under B. 8. 54:1-26 to order the local assessors in a proper case to make a re-assessment of any property undervalued, or a re-assessment of all property in the taxing district; a proper case is clearly presented when the data collected by the Director reveals that the duplicates of any particular taxing district reflect a serious breach of duty by the local tax assessor. In the Baldwin case, and again in this ease, this court has not found it possible, within the justiciable controversies before us, to deal with the admitted failures of statutory duty at all levels. But Mr. Justice Burling has repeated in his opinion here the observation of Mr. Justice Heher in the Baldwin case that “If the assessing authority *226fails in its peremptory duty under the Constitution and laws, then resort may be had to the remedies appropriate to the particular default.” This is a reminder to citizens and taxpayers generally that, if the assessing authorities repeat for 1956 the indefensible unfairness and discrimination which result from the fixing of assessments at less than true value, they have it within their power to force the hands of assessing officials through a proceeding in lieu of prerogative writ or other appropriate action looking to a court order compelling their compliance. There is ample time for such a proceeding before the duplicates become final on May 1, 1956.
Vanderbilt, C. J., joins in this concurring opinion.
For reversal and remandmenl — Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Heher, Oliphant, Wacheneeld, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan — U
Wacheneeld, J., concurring in result.
For affirmance — None.