Court Opinion

ID: 9863081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 03:03:54.549869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:46:53.713931
License: Public Domain

KILGARLIN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. It is a tortured reading, at best, of the amendment to Tex. Const, art. VIII, § 18, to conclude that it strips from elected officials their constitutional obligation to “perform all the duties with respect to assessing property for the purpose of taxation ...” Tex. Const, art. VIII, § 14. Further, I seriously doubt that Texans, with a strong tradition since Reconstruction of electing public servants, would have approved the 1980 amendment to article VIII, section 18, had they known that it would be subsequently interpreted to mean that the people’s duly elected tax assessor and collector would be substituted by appraisal boards insulated from public scrutiny.
The ballot, in 1980, read: “The constitutional amendment requiring a single appraisal and a single board of equalization within each county for ad valorem tax purposes.” H.J.R. 98, 66th Leg., 1979 Tex.Gen.Laws 3229. Nothing in this language remotely suggests that the tax assessor and collector would not perform that appraisal. It is fundamental that one of the duties with respect to assessing property is to first appraise it.
What we have wrought by the court’s opinion today is to give to faceless, nameless boards, responsible to the electorate only in a most indirect and circuitous way, a stamp of approval to continue to escalate to irrational levels appraised evaluations *102far in excess of the market value of people’s homes. If no taxation without representation was a popular theme a little over two hundred years ago, surely no appraisal without representation should share a similar accolade today.
Although the court analyzes laws enacted subsequent to the amendment to article VIII, section 18, in an effort to justify its holding, the appellee Appraisal District contends that the tax assessor and collector has been denuded of his appraisal duties solely on the basis of the constitutional amendment.
This court has an obligation to read in harmony provisions of the Constitution. We can do so by simply requiring a single appraisal within each county to be performed by the tax assessor and collector of that county. I would reverse the trial court’s judgment.
RAY, J., joins in this dissent.