Court Opinion

ID: 9575775
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:17:05.599782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:01.438657
License: Public Domain

Benham, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from Division 3 of the majority opinion wherein the majority concludes that the 1953, 1957, 1958, and 1974 amendments to the 1952 legislation establishing a joint city-county board of tax assessors are unconstitutional because they provide for a procedure to contest a real estate assessment other than by a board of tax appeals and equalization. This conclusion is based upon a narrow, restrictive reading of that portion of the 1952 constitutional amendment authorizing the establishment of appellate review of tax assessments. The majority determines that the amendment requires an exclusive method of appeal, and that method involves a Board of Tax Appeals and Equalization for Atlanta and Fulton County. I respectfully disagree, concluding that the legislature was not restricted in its creation of a method by which the residents of Atlanta and Fulton County might appeal from the assessments made by the joint city-county board of tax assessors.
The 1952 amendment empowered the General Assembly to
[c] reate a board of tax appeals and equalization, by whatever *583name designated, . . . and establish procedures for appeals from assessments made by the board of tax assessors . . . which procedures shall be in lieu of any rights of arbitration or appeal heretofore existing in the county or in the city.
Decided October 2, 1991.
Thomas L. Murphy, for appellants (case no. S91A1113).
Michael V. Coleman, Joe M. Harris, Sarah I. Miles, for appellant (case no. S91A1114).
W. Roy Mays III, for appellants (case no. S91A1115).
The amendment also declared that
the General Assembly is empowered, but not directed, to exercise such authority by one law pertaining to all or any one or more of said functions. . . .
The constitutional amendment did not require the creation of a Board of Tax Appeals and Equalization for Atlanta and Fulton County for several reasons. First, the use of the term “board of tax appeals and equalization” did not, in 1952, carry with it the meaning it has today because there was no such entity as a board of tax appeals and equalization in Georgia in 1952. Thus, reference to a board of tax appeals and equalization encompassed any procedure “by whatever name designated” by which tax assessments could be appealed and equalized. Arbitration is such a procedure.
Second, even if the phrase as used in the 1952 constitutional amendment is construed to describe the entity which has evolved over the past 39 years into what we know today as a board of tax appeals and equalization, the constitutional amendment did not require the creation of such a board of tax appeals and equalization. The amendment permitted the legislature to choose which constitutionally-authorized powers it wished to exercise. Thus, the General Assembly was entitled to refrain from exercising its authority to create a board of tax appeals and equalization for Atlanta and Fulton County, and to pass legislation establishing a procedure for appeals from assessments. The legislature’s sanctioning of arbitration as the method of assessment appeal is an exercise of the discretion given the legislature by the 1952 constitutional amendment.
Because I believe the majority has construed the constitutional amendment too narrowly and imposed requirements where the exercise of legislative discretion was authorized, I must respectfully dissent.
*584Robert J. Proctor, D. John Skandalakis, for appellees.