Why Is Denton County’s Chief Appraiser Lodging a Protest Against Property Tax Protesters?

Well, he said it.Asked at a recent editorial board meeting of the Denton Record-Chronicle why there was a record number of property tax protests last year, Denton County chief appraiser Rudy Durham had a quick answer.As I watched live on Facebook, Durham, who is also Lewisville's mayor, blamed me:"There's a consumer watchdog that is encouraging people to file a protest. Not so people can get their properties corrected. He wants to mess up the system and shut it down and prove a point is what he said."This is Dave Lieber of The Dallas Morning News. And that's his words that he was trying to shut the system down. I don't know if it's personal or what."A bit later, his deputy chief appraiser, George Clerihew, doubled down, saying, "We just ask that you do a little homework first, not like Dave Lieber said, file a protest to break the system and that type of thing."Overwhelm, not shut downYeah, it's personal. It's personal for millions of Texans who are in shock at this confusing, unfair, unequal, non-transparent tax system based on estimated guesses of a property's value.Two years ago, I announced my apparently-successful "Everybody file a protest" campaign. (We even have a flag!) If more property owners filed protests, I wrote, "appraisal districts will be overwhelmed with workloads like never before. There's nothing wrong with this. It's your legal right as a Texan to file a protest every year, even if your taxes don't go up, and even if your school taxes are frozen because you're a senior or disabled."I explained that appraisal districts rush to finish because of deadlines. "Overload the system like never before, and in return, appraisers would have to settle cases in greater numbers than ever to clear their calendar by the state's July deadline," I added.Do I still believe this? Heck yeah.  Continue reading...