To: The Dallas Morning News "Viewpoints" page
Date:  December 8, 2008
Subject: President Bush moving to Dallas
Result: not printed 


President and Mrs. Bush have made an excellent choice to move to Dallas – a city, in a county, where we are very deferential and solicitous and beneficent towards rich people like them. As noted in The Dallas Morning News, the house the Bush's will move into has been appraised by the county at $2.1 million, "but the home sold for considerably more." The difference between the "considerably more" they paid and the $2.1 million appraised value is the bonus enjoyed by all wealthy homeowners in Dallas. Therefore, us poor folks get to pay a big portion of their bills.

Recently you printed a letter to the editor, your token acknowledgment of the issue, in which a reader said he had looked at the online property tax records and found that a house that sold for $15 million (+/-) was valued by the county at only about half as much. That gentleman speculated that if there was such a large difference between the assessed and the real value on that one house, it probably applied to many other homes owned by wealthy people too.

I myself did a research project on this matter – after writing a censored letter or two to the editor about it – and found that such discrepancies are not an exception, but by far the rule. As a result, we have, I'm persuaded, tens of millions of dollars of unrealized income that should be available to public schools, the hospital district, the community college district, and general county government.

Meanwhile, a bunch of the largest and most expensive homes in Dallas don't even make it to the tax rolls. For example, the magnificent edifice on the corner of Preston and Walnut Hill.  That's one of a bunch.  I don't know if they just get a total free ride or what.

The tremendous shortfall resulting from under-assessed property values of the wealthy is a strong, direct inducement for the county to be very aggressive in assessing the value of the homes of poor schmoes like me, who have experienced a steady rise in the assessed value of my house, assessed at $142,000. The way it's going, I think I'll be lucky if I only lose $20,000 off the $135,000 I paid, four years ago. But I'm paying some extra to help out them rich folks, like President and Mrs. Bush.

I tell you what. If I were a Dallas County Commissioner, or an executive with the hospital or community college district, I would consider it incumbent upon myself to be fighting tooth and nail for proper valuations for the homes of the wealthy. Commissioner Price makes all kinds of noise. Why can't he make noise about this?

And then there is the question of what role is The Dallas Morning News playing in the righting of this wrong? When it comes to things like trying to persuade people not to vote for a straight ticket – at a time when that might be detrimental to your preferred Republican candidates – or pushing your preferred candidates with repeated recommendations, you're all over it.

But you're sure not going to be pushing for anything when your own executives benefit from the current valuation practices – including that law they passed last year, barely mentioned in the paper, with zero analysis of the implications, that said all those severely undervalued properties owned by the wealthy cannot have their assessed values increased more than 10 percent a year. As I observed in my censored letter written after that law was passed, it benefited nobody but the wealthy.

Then there are the many cases I found in my research when homes like that of Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney get what they call a "capped value" on what I imagine is his luxurious house and two cabanas (per the tax record), thereby writing their under-assessed, unfair valuations in stone.

I'm sure y'all are going to want to look into this. You can put your Pulitzer prize lady on it. I'll be glad to provide my research to her or another one of your impassioned reporters.**
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** referring to their recent major marketing campaign featuring reporters saying on full-page ads that they are "passionate" about their journalism, in a situation where they are instructed what to be passionate about.

Their "Pulitzer Prize lady" is Keven Ann Willey, Vice President of the Editorial Page, who recently won that prize for her great dedication to truth and journalistic integrity and all that.