Brown County Commissioners adopted the Brown County property tax rate for 2015 Tuesday afternoon despite a lawsuit filed by one citizen regarding an alleged procedural mistake of the court. The matter of tax rate adoption was originally on the Monday, September 29th agenda; however commissioners recessed the meeting and returned to unfinished agenda items of a public hearing and adoption of the tax rate on Tuesday afternoon. Commissioners already adopted the county’s $18 million budget for fiscal year 2014/2015 Monday morning, which is about a $1 million increase from the previous year.
During the a public hearing Tuesday afternoon regarding the tax rate, Brown County citizen Joe Cooksey stated that he filed a lawsuit because the court had met on September 8th and 12th with the required two public hearings and that state law required the tax rate to be set within 14 days of the second public hearing. He stated that an unnecessary third public hearing was posted without timely notice given to the public in an effort to cure the mistake of the court. The notice was published Monday evening and Tuesday morning by local media outlets. Commissioners argued that the Tuesday meeting was a continuance of the Monday meeting and did not require the lengthy notice.
The lawsuit names Cooksey as the complainant and Brown County Judge Ray West and Commissioners Gary Worley, Wayne Shaw, Larry Traweek and Joel Kelton as defendants.
Cooksey also alleges in the lawsuit that the court did not disclose their salaries properly as elected officials.
The court called in County Attorney Shane Britton for consultation if the meeting could proceed with the lawsuit filed.“You can ask the public to fork over $1 million more than last year; you can do it, but you have to do it legally,” said Cooksey. “You can’t bury it (the members of the court’s salaries) in a budget.”
After a question from County Clerk Sharon Ferguson if the county employees would still get their 5% raises after this lawsuit had been filed, especially those other than elected officials, Britton stated that the budget adopted Monday still stands and now commissioners had to figure out how to pay for the expenditures within the budget, including the 5% raise for all county employees, including elected officials.
Commissioners asked Britton his opinion if the court could legally go forward with the public hearing and adoption of the tax rate with the lawsuit pending. Britton stated that he was not sure; that he would have to do some research. The court recessed until 4:45 p.m. Tuesday.
In a brief continuance of the meeting, commissioners unanimously adopted the Brown County Tax rate of $0.5744/per $100 valuation, which breaks down to general fund rate of $0.4476; debt service fee rate of $0.0467/per $100 valuation; and road and flood rate of 0.0801/$100 valuation. This new rate is effectively a 7.344% increase in the tax revenue which will be raised for maintenance and operations of Brown County.
Brown County Judge Ray West was not present at the meeting because of illness.
