Court Opinion

ID: 9605187
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:31:25.098333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:08:05.450218
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Chief Justice,
dissenting, in which BISTLINE, Justice, joins:
The original Art. 7, § 12, of the Idaho Constitution gave the assessing function of real property in the State of Idaho first to the county assessors and county boards of equalization, followed by a review by the State Board of Equalization. The Idaho Supreme Court in Blomquist v. Board of County Comm’rs, 25 Idaho 284, 137 P. 174 (1913), held that it would be unconstitutional for the legislature to give any of that assessing or equalizing function to the original State Tax Commission, and said that the legislature did not have the power to remove those assessing and equalizing functions from the constitutional bodies. Subsequently in 1944, Art. 7, § 12, of the Constitution was amended permitting the legislature, if it so desired, to authorize the State Tax Commission to perform the assessing or equalizing function. Pursuant to that constitutional authorization, the legislature created the present State Tax Commission and gave it the authority to assess and equalize the ad valorem assessments of railroads and other property. Subsequently, in 1969, the legislature created the Board of Tax Appeals and attempted to permit a de novo review of decisions of the State Tax Commission by the board, which in effect was a legislative attempt to give the constitutional power of assessing and equalizing of ad valorem taxes to a body other than that spelled out in Art. 7, § 12, of the Constitution. That is precisely what this Court ruled in the Blomquist case that the legislature had no authority to do. The Board of Tax Appeals in the present case stands in exactly the same position as the old Tax Commission in 1913 at the time of the Blomquist case. Our decision today should be the same as the Blomquist deci*816sion was then. There should be no de novo review by a legislative entity of the ad valorem tax decisions of the constitutional entities provided for in Art. 7, § 12, of the Idaho Constitution.
Consequently, I dissent.