It is pathetic beyond believe that our legislators, lead by Chuck Gray, are trying to address the spike in property tax bills by capping the property assessment at 20% per year! This was done with zero input and no mandate or consensus of the electorate by Representative Gray and his fellow legislators. I looked at a property tax printout for one year, put out by the state board of equalization, which showed the annual percentage change in property assessment for all 23 Wyoming counties. They were all different! Some increased several percent while other went down several percent! If the current property tax system was fair and equitable, shouldn’t all assessments increase or decrease by the same percentage? In one hearing that I attended, here in Worland, the protesting party’s property value increased by 11%, while the adjacent property value decreased by 14%! This is a variance of 25% yet no relieve was obtained by the appealing party! The assessor’s explanation for this discrepancy was that the houses in question were in different “neighborhoods”, i.e., they were of different construction! A commercial property, here in Worland, increased from $185,000 to $338,000 in a single year. The owner was able to prove the replacement cost of the structure was less that half the value determined by the assessor. A property in Buffalo, Wyoming evaluation increased by 2,900% in one year; the owner spent about $250,000 to fight this. It is time for this unfair, outrageous and confusing property tax system to go! Numerous letters to legislators and governors over the past decade have fallen on deaf ears! We need an “acquisition” based property tax system that is based on the arms-length sale price of a property like California’s proposition 13 that was passed several years ago because people were being taxed out of their homes! Under Proposition 13, the annual real estate tax on a parcel of property is limited to 1% of its assessed value. This "assessed value," may be increased only by a maximum of 2% per year, until and unless the property has a change of ownership.