Newton County Assessor refuses to raise property value rates

Newton County Assessor Cheryle Perkins is standing up for residents by NOT raising county property tax valuations by 12%, even though the state’s tax commission says she is out of compliance.

“I told them I would not do that,” Perkins told Newstalk KZRG. “Then they decided that they put up this little step scenario that if I don’t do this, then they’re going to go to my BOE board. Well, my BOE board’s not going to do it either. So then they said, well, then we’re going to withhold your money. Well, they’ve already sent me a letter that they’re going to withhold my money. And then if that doesn’t work, because then they are going to have the prosecuting attorney and the attorney general remove me from office. And that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to do that.”

The State Tax Commission sent out this memorandum of understanding to 80 counties in total that they deemed to be out of compliance.

Missouri law requires assessments to fall within 90-to-110% of market value. Newton County is currently at 77%, but Perkins says the county can take the blow.

“Some counties couldn’t afford to lose the funding being reimbursed. So Newton county is lucky that I can take the burden of losing the reimbursement money, but some of them can’t. And that’s why they had to do it. Not that they wanted to. They had to survive.”

Perkins says local lawmakers are working on a future plan to try and cap these residential value increases at 5%. “And Rep. Dirk Deaton is trying to change it or he’s going to try when he gets back into session to fix it so that the state tax commission can’t hold our reimbursement funds over our head. That because it’s state reimbursement money, the state should go ahead and reimburse you and not state tax commission.”