One issue that you will undoubtedly be hearing a lot about during the coming session is the way that telecom and utility property is valued for purposes of the local property tax.  Over the summer, the state Assessing Standards Board spent a lot of time studying this issue, and it emerged from that review that there are major differences from town to town in how telecom and electric poles are valued (a survey done by the ASB on telecom pole values showed that around the state a telecom pole might be valued at anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars).  These wide divergences have led to the filing of a host of abatement actions by telecom and electric companies. 

 

The Department of Revenue Administration values electric utility property around the state for the purposes of determining how much the utilities need to pay on the state-wide utility property tax, and not surprisingly it seems that the electric utilities frequently introduce that valuation into evidence in those abatement actions. Last year, HB 192 sought to prohibit electric utilities from introducing the DRA valuation into evidence in the abatement cases.  The utilities argued (in our view, correctly) that the decision about what evidence can be used in those cases should be left to the judge or the Board of Tax and Land Appeals, as has always been the practice (and in any event it would seem particularly odd to have a law that excludes a piece of evidence that comes from a state agency that is a neutral third-party). After looking at the issue, the ASB recommended to the Senate Ways and Means Committee that HB 192 be killed, and on Tuesday the Committee made that recommendation to the full Senate.  That bill will be on the floor next week. Because the costs of property taxes on utilities find their way into the utility bills paid by businesses around the state, this is an issue that we will be following closely.