GREEN RIVER – Voters will have a chance to decide if real property will receive its own tax rate in the upcoming General Election and there are a few issues voters should consider before marking their ballots.
The question regarding Amendment A on the ballot asks if a fourth class of tax focused on residential property and owner-occupied primary residences should be created. Currently, property taxes are divided into three groups: industrial, mineral, and all others. The “all others” category includes residential property, commercial property and agricultural land, among others. It will take 50% of voters participating in the election, plus one, to approve the amendment. If approved, it would separate residential real property into its own tax class and allow the Wyoming Legislature to create a subclass of owner-occupied primary residences. This would allow residential real property and owner-occupied primary residences to be taxed differently than commercial property and other property in the “all others” category.
Laurie Urbigkit, the government affairs officer for Wyoming Realtors, appeared on KUGR’s “Let’s Talk with Al Harris” last week to speak about the amendment with Green River Realtor Angela Wilson. According to Urbigkit, agricultural land is taxed based on production, but the other types of property are taxed the same because the state’s constitution requires all property in each class be taxed uniformly. She said the state’s current tax classes were established following a lawsuit that was filed by the state’s mineral producers in the 1980s as the constitution stated all property should be taxed uniformly, while the reality of the situation was 23 county assessors were taxing property differently.
“That’s when in … 1986, the Wyoming Legislature passed this three-class situation,” Urbigkit said. “It was a constitutional amendment, and it went into effect in 1987.”
Wyoming Realtors supports making residential property into its own classification. Urbigkit said the organization has had a standing position supporting proposals that would allow people to stay in their homes. She said it would allow the state to utilize a different tax rate to address increasing property assessment values that led to higher residential property taxes. Urbigkit claimed an increase in property values after the COVID-19 pandemic as people moved to the state resulted in tax increases of between 400% and 500%.
Urbigkit said a concern she’s heard is if residential is separated out it would be lowered, and the other taxes would be increased. However, she doesn’t see that happening as the legislature is made up of very conservative members.
“I do not believe for one minute that any legislator in Wyoming is going to vote to raise anyone’s property taxes,” she said.
Other concerns about what may happen after it passes exist, with Sweetwater County’s assessor voicing some of them.
Concerns and a Pandemic Ripple Effect
“I am very concerned,” Sweetwater County Assessor Dave Divis said Tuesday morning.
He said making residential property its own tax class would have been a good idea before the Wyoming Legislature opted to pass a series of bills aimed at providing property tax relief earlier this year. Those bills were focused on curbing massive increases in property valuation that led to large jumps in residential property taxes. Divis’ concern comes from there not being enough time to see if property tax relief already established by the legislature is sufficient to address the issue and if more is done, it could create a situation where legislators overcorrect and ultimately does more harm than good.
Divis’ assessment of the tax situation aligns with Urbigkit’s, saying the issue came from a heated buyer’s market created during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic where cash-flush remote workers from other states bought residential property in Wyoming. These buyers often competed with one another and made cash offers, which drove up property values in many locations throughout the state. While a few residential properties selling higher than normal won’t impact assessed valuations as they would be outliers that could be ignored, a sudden surge in homes sales that are higher than average creates a new average a county assessor needs to use as part of the property value assessments. Divis said county assessors can’t ignore a new trend in property values, otherwise Wyoming’s State Board of Equalization will step in and reset the assessment values, leaving a county assessor and their office to “pick up the pieces.”
While the state’s municipalities, which include Rock Springs and Green River, receive a majority of their funding from sales taxes, county governments and school districts receive a large portion of funding through property tax. While Sweetwater County itself receives a sizable portion of revenue from taxes on minerals, other counties don’t have mineral wealth to rely upon. Places like Teton County and Sheridan County are much more dependent on residential property tax and those are the locations where residential property assessments have seen the double-digit percentage increases that have occurred year over year, along with the resulting higher tax bills legislators sought to address.
The impact of property tax relief legislation
A 4% cap on increased property taxes for residential structures and land passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Mark Gordon earlier this year has had an impact on assessed valuations already. According to data from the Sweetwater County Assessor’s Office, Sweetwater County’s 8.52% increase in residential property during 2023 declined to a 3.59% increase in 2024. In Sublette County, the impact is more pronounced as the county had a 25.69% residential property value increase in 2023, with only a 5.06% increase this year. Overall, the 2023 state average assessed property value increase was 17.93%, while in 2024 the increase averaged 3.01%.
Divis’ office is already seeing a lot of interest in another property tax relief program approved by the legislature and Gordon. More than 1,000 county residents have applied for a property tax exemption opened to long term homeowners over 65 years old. The application deadline doesn’t arrive until May 2025 and Divis anticipates approximately 1,500 applications as his office has conducted outreach efforts this month at the county’s senior centers and plans to visit the Farson senior luncheon Oct. 24. According to Divis, the average exemption in the county is estimated to be approximately $818 for those who qualify and would exempt roughly $1.2 million overall in property taxes. This program has a sunset date of July 1, 2027, but could be continued by legislators if they decide the need still exists.
The third bill in the tax relief package created a rebate program for residential property based on the prior year’s assessed value and also sunsets July 1, 2027. The bill received a line item veto from Gordon when he signed it, removing the highest income tier listed in the bill. Gordon said his concern was the $20 million earmarked to provide rebates would not cover rebates for that tier, however the popularity of the program may force the legislature to add more funds. Divis said approximately $14 million of the program’s $20 million earmark has already been spent.
The final property tax relief bill increased an exemption offered to Wyoming’s veterans from $3,000 to $6,000 of assessed residential property value. Divis said the county has approximately 1,100 veterans and widows who qualify for that program.
