All sides in Madison County tax battle: It's ugly

DANIELSVILLE - The multi-year feud among the Madison County Board of Assessors, the chief tax appraiser's staff and Madison County commissioners has marred the reputation of the county's tax assessment system.

Witnesses for both the Board of Assessors and Board of Commissioners agreed on that one point Wednesday at a five-hour judicial review hearing set to determine whether commissioners have the right to remove the current four members of the assessors board.

Assessors board members testified that commissioners' oversight of the office sullied the objectivity of the tax assessment system. An attorney for commissioners claimed that assessors' public infighting destroyed the public's confidence in their tax assessments.

"Solving this problem means starting fresh," said County Attorney Mike Pruett. "We have a new chief appraiser. We need a new board that hasn't been tainted by the poisonous atmosphere of the last several years."

Commissioners voted in April to fire four members of the panel, claiming that disputes among board members and the appraisal staff had kept the board from getting anything done. The board of assessors appealed the commission vote, and requested that a Superior Court judge review their decision.

Commissioners, who appoint assessors, can remove them from office if they have sufficient cause, but an attorney for the assessors insists that commissioners did not have a good reason to fire the current group of assessors.

The four current members of the assessors board will hold onto their seats until the appeals process ends. A fifth assessor resigned earlier this year.

The Madison County's Tax Assessors Office has not filed the county's tax digest - the annual record of all the county's taxable property and its value - by the state Department of Revenue's Aug. 1 deadline since before 2004. That alone was grounds for commissioners to fire the assessors, Pruett said.

The tardy tax documents have cost the county $9,391 in state fines. Because the county can't send out tax bills or collect taxes until the digest is complete, county officials have, over the years, been forced to take out several tax anticipation loans to run the government and have paid $56,000 in interest since 2004, Pruett said.

But assessors - who are appointed board members, not the county employees who actually appraise property - contend that they have never had control of the tax assessment staff or whether the digests were done on time, argued assessors' attorney Rob Leverett.

Turnover in the office was overwhelming, with four chief appraisers hired since 2004 and the position still often sitting vacant, Leverett said.

Commissioners retained the ability to hire, fire and discipline the chief appraiser and his staff. Even when the office was fully staffed, assessors had no way to ensure that appraisers were wor