As the advocate for the state’s residential utility customers – and thus as someone who thinks utilities should pay only their fair share of property taxes, because those taxes are passed on to ratepayers – I was really puzzled by your Oct. 22
You admit that when individual municipalities are left to assess these properties themselves, the results are often unreasonably high. But you nevertheless urge the Legislature to reject this sensible proposal to require municipalities to use a uniform method established by the Department of Revenue Administration.
You claim there are still too many unanswered questions to legislate. Meanwhile, a utility like the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative was assessed by local officials last year at nearly $116 million more than what the DRA method would have produced.
Property is supposed to be assessed at its fair market value. A few years ago, Bow assessed Eversource’s coal plant there at $159 million. A superior court judge said it’s worth $67.4 million. Earlier this month, Eversource agreed to sell the plant for $75 million.
The system of valuing utility property community-by-community is broken, and the work to fix it must continue. One idea would be to remove assessment of generation facilities from the discussion, to help lessen the blow for communities with power plants. But we urgently need to do something about unjustly high assessments, and make sure all parties are at the table in good faith.
D. MAURICE KREIS
Concord