Story last updated at 1:46 a.m. Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Schools will lose with HB 1715 passage

Letters, Faxes, E-mails

By The Associated Press
Oklahoma's editorial writers expressed their opinions on a variety of topics last week, including taxing oil producers and education laws. Here is a sampling:

April 25

The Enid News & Eagle on taxing oil producers:

The Oklahoma Legislature currently is considering a bill that is pitting oil producers against school officials and some county officials.

The legislation is House Bill 1715, which would eliminate the property tax currently being charged on some oil company property. Oil company officials and their supporters in the Legislature say the companies are being taxed twice and it isn't fair. They say they are taxed twice for production -- once at the wellhead and then again along flow lines to points of transfer.

We don't disagree with part of that. Yes, oil companies pay gross production tax for what they produce. The ad valorem tax they pay, however, is for equipment, not the oil being pumped. So there isn't really any double taxation.

We think state Sen. Cliff Branan, R-Oklahoma City, is going too far when he said "rogue counties" are acting as "prosecutor, judge and jury" in setting unfair valuations. That makes it sound like the oil companies have no recourse to protest their valuations.

That simply isn't true. All residents of Oklahoma who pay property taxes have the right to protest their valuations. They may not always win, but they have the right to question things. Oil companies have that same right.

Garfield County Assessor Wade Patterson was one of the leaders in an effort by assessors across the state who did visual inspection programs on oil and gas property Patterson said "discovered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property that was escaping taxation." The money collected has benefited schools across the state, which receive much of their revenue from property taxes.

Schools stand to lose if HB 1715 is passed. State education officials place the loss at $70 million, although oil company supporters place the loss at less than $10 million.

What we would like to see is all assessors in the state get on the same page. The visual inspection programs, like the one done by Garfield County, were only completed in 30 counties. This is something all assessors should be doing, so there is a consistent policy across Oklahoma.

We urge lawmakers to reject HB 1715, and we urge all county assessors to get on board with the program and make sure valuations are done the same everywhere.