Editor’s note: Paul Lefebvre is the author of “Perimeter Check: Essays from Vermont’s Upper Kingdom” and a staff writer for the Chronicle in Barton, which has given Vtdigger.org permission to publish this story.
Changes in the current use law that were passed by the House in January are being overhauled by a Senate committee reviewing the legislation.
Gone is the one-year moratorium on accepting new members into the program, and there appears no end in sight over a discussion if the land use change tax should be revised.
Those discussions and more among members of the Senate Finance Committee are causing anxiety attacks among a growing number of participants in the program, which taxes property of the basis of use rather than fair market value.
“I think there is a groundswell because it is disrupting the stability we had,” said Ed Lawson, a lobbyist and executive director of Vermont Forest Products.
The new changes, he added, are causing some of the 12,500 participants in the program to wonder is it “really wrong for me to hold land for my family.”
Continued discussion on the bill with a possible vote is on the committee’s agenda for this week. Still unresolved is the question of how land taken out of the program or excluded should be appraised.
Bill Johnson, who heads the state’s Property Valuation and Review, told committee members last week that all property should first be appraised at fair market value or highest and best use. That way, he added, there would be a base value for listers to rely on before the property is enrolled in current use.
One of the problems of appraising open land, however, is finding comparables. Where the comparative value of buildings is easy to determine, it is difficult for listers to find similar pieces of land, according Senator Ann Cummings, who heads the committee and is a real estate agent in her professional life.
Before she determines the fair market value of a property, Senator Cummings said she takes three comparables.
The question facing the committee is how much weight should be given to fair market value when a piece of property, say ten acres, is taken out from a larger tract of land of 100 acres that has been enrolled in current use.
Some say the land should be appraised at its highest and best value. Such an appraisal would mean higher taxes to the owner. Others argue that the appraisal should be pro-rated or represent 10 percent of what the entire 100 acres were appraised at before they went into current use.
In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Lawson argued that a fair market value appraisal of the ten acres would penalize the landowner the program intended to help. Those ten acres, he said, should not be appraised as if they were a subdivision.
“The law is silent now on why you exclude property,” he said.
The fair market appraisal would push land values up and, according to Mr. Larson, prevent families from passing building lots onto their next generation.
C he said.
