County sought review of the decision of the Tax Equalization and Review Commission (TERC) that adjusted the valuation of three areas of residential real property in the county and denied county’s motion for reconsideration.
The Supreme Court of Nebraska held that:
- Reappraisal, and not an 8% decrease in area’s valuation, was the proper remedy to the lack of uniformity and regressive vertical inequity in one area’s property value assessments;
- Sufficient evidence supported TERC’s order of a 7% increase in valuations of other two areas;
- As matter of apparent first impression, the abuse-of-discretion standard applies to the Supreme Court’s review of the grant or denial of a motion to reconsider by an administrative body; and
- TERC did not abuse its discretion by denying county’s motion to reconsider.
Reappraisal, rather than Tax Equalization and Review Commission’s (TERC) order of an 8% decrease in valuation, was the proper remedy for the lack of uniformity and regressive vertical inequity in property value assessments in valuation area, and thus TERC’s order was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. The median assessment-to-sales ratio for the area of 104.82% and the coefficient of dispersion of 48.43%, which was outside the acceptable range of 15%, meant that a blanket equalization order would not solve the area’s lack of assessment uniformity, but would only shift the problem, and the price-related differential of 1.22 showed that the lower-value properties in the area were significantly overassessed while higher-value properties were significantly under-assessed.
Sufficient evidence supported Tax Equalization and Review Commission’s (TERC) order of a 7% increase to valuations of areas with median assessment-to-sales ratios of 89.77% and 90.08%, which fell outside the statutory range of 92% to 100%. The quality statistics showed that the median was a reliable indicator of central tendency, the coefficients of dispersion of 15.27% and 12.49% for the areas were within or at the top of the acceptable range of 15%, the price-related differentials for the areas of 1.0571 and 1.0347 were at or slightly above the top of the acceptable range of 0.98 to 1.03, and minor regressive vertical inequity was minimal.
The abuse-of-discretion standard applies to the Supreme Court’s review of the grant or denial of a motion to reconsider by an administrative body.
Tax Equalization and Review Commission (TERC) did not abuse its discretion by denying county’s motion to reconsider TERC’s decision to order the adjustment of three valuation areas of residential real property, despite argument that state Property Tax Administrator’s report improperly included sales that county categorized as non-arm’s-length transactions and matched sales data to the wrong areas, where county did not allege that the Administrator’s report improperly included sales that the county designated in the sales worksheets as non-usable, county could have raised allegations in the show-cause hearing that sales data was matched to the wrong areas, and county provided no information as to the impact of the alleged errors with the mismatched data.