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And the consequences of that change — expected to affect more than 1,000 landowners in Winona County alone — weren’t fully considered before the bill was approved in 2008, lawmakers and other state officials acknowledged Wednesday.
“Some of these things just were not discussed,” state legislative analyst Karen Baker told a testy crowd at St. Charles City Hall.
Baker, Minnesota Department of Revenue officials and Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Wabasha, were talking about changes to Minnesota’s Green Acres Program, established to lower the taxable value of certain rural land in participating Minnesota counties, including Winona, Houston and Fillmore.
Following revenue officials’ reports that Green Acres wasn’t uniformly administered and didn’t achieve its original objective, Minnesota lawmakers changed the program in an omnibus tax bill passed late in the 2008 legislative session. As a result, untillable land such as woodland, sloughs and pastures — which make up roughly half the agricultural land in Winona County — will no longer be allowed in Green Acres. Also, those wishing to sell nonproductive Green Acres land would be forced to pay back property taxes on it.
Landowners said Wednesday that those changes amount to a broken contract with taxpayers that punishes landowners who preserve sensitive lands for nonagricultural use. They also questioned why woodland, often harvested for timber in southeast Minnesota, isn’t considered productive land as part of the changes.
Winona County Assessor Steve Hacken said county officials will have to pay about $100,000 to rewrite computer programs to adapt to the new tax laws. The Green Acres changes create administrative headaches and don’t make the program more uniform as lawmakers intended, Hacken said.
Following public outcry over the changes, the deadline for landowners to decide what to do with their Green Acres land has been pushed back from January 2009 to summer 2009, state officials said. Lawmakers meanwhile are expected to discuss a fix during the 2009 session, said Drazkowski, who backs a proposal that would reverse the changes.
Mark Sommerhauser may be reached at (507) 453-3514 or at sommerhauser@winonadailynews.com
thistime wrote on Nov 3, 2008 12:04 AM: