The Mecklenburglars
Al Capone and John Gotti could have learned a thing or two from Mecklenburg County officials. The two mob bosses clocked hard time for running organized criminal enterprises that reaped millions of dollars through theft, extortion and racketeering; county officials in Mecklenburg get off with a slap on the wrist and another chance behind the wheel of the getaway car.
I speak, of course, about the grossly flawed 2011 revaluation, hereafter officially referred to as the Big Heist. The details are by now as familiar as they are deplorable. And unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any meaningful justice, financial or otherwise, on the horizon for taxpayers.
County commissioners have spent weeks posturing and pontificating about ways to fix the Big Heist, including a possible reval redo and issuing refunds to homeowners who got fleeced. But let’s face the cold, hard reality: scam artists and conmen don’t refund their marks. Ever. And there’s little indication that the county board’s new tax-and-spend majority would have any inclination to return millions of dollars in ill-gotten property tax revenues.
Indeed, Democrats who swept the board’s at-large race in November did so in large part on promises of spending more money, from social services to schools to public-private partnerships, parks and recreation, and everything in between. And you don’t get to do that by returning loot that already lines county coffers.
The outgoing board of commissioners, which was at the helm as the Big Heist unfolded, took some initial steps to begin trying to right the wrong, but stopped well short of approving any substantive action that would lead down the road to a reval redo and taxpayer refunds. Preemptive barriers are already being erected, in fact, to block that particular avenue of recourse. Too complicated, too messy, too troublesome, you see.
Baloney, to paraphrase fiscal conservative stalwart and former city councilmember Don Reid, who blasted out an email imploring state legislators to take action if our local so-called leaders falter:
Our elected officials and bureaucrats are avoiding doing the right thing because of the ‘complexity’ of the problem. This is not a complex problem. This should not be a partisan problem. The county did a lousy job of revaluation — the property owners have been royally ‘screwed’, and the county is holding money illegally taken from many property owners.
In addition, the entire [reval appeals] review process was stacked against the property owners and in most cases acted like a kangaroo court. Most of us did not have the time or the expertise to navigate the system, much less spend an entire day trying to be heard and waiting for the verdict. Are you aware that each property owner was given 5 minutes to make his case, with decisions made at the end of day. How could the Review members possibly remember the dozens of cases they had heard that day?
Everything about this evaluation and appeal process has been flawed and many people, not just the wealthy, have been hurt. I personally know of one 72-year-old lady, who lives on social security and works a few hours a week as a bookkeeper, whose modest home had a tax increase from $1800 to $2800 per year. For her, this is a lot of money. She simply could not navigate the appeals process. There are hundreds more like her.
On behalf of this lady, all the thousands of property owners who have been victims of this illegal revaluation, and particularly in the quest for rebuilding trust in government, I am asking you to find a way to direct the county to conduct a new, complete reevaluation, to revert to the values prior to this last one and return the money illegally taken from the property owners. It’s the right thing to do and you are our last resort.
If any one of us owes the government money, that money must be paid or the government will raid our bank account or confiscate our property, without regard to our budget problems or personal situation. Surely, the government should be held to the same standard when it has illegally taken money from us!
There are common car thieves, bank robbers, and home burglars who will pale as rank amateurs compared to the Mecklenburglars, if the Big Heist is allowed to stand without appropriate reimbursement to egregiously wronged property owners.
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