Mississippi has a problem with tax-forfeited properties, and it has yet to come up with an effective and fair way to deal with them.
A recent story in the Clarion Ledger reports that there are about 7,000 properties around Mississippi that have been forfeited to the state for unpaid property taxes.
These properties — most of them abandoned homes and other structures, or just empty lots — are apparently not worth much because those who had owned them stopped paying taxes on them, and nobody else thought they were worth the investment of paying taxes on them during a tax sale.
The state has little use for them either, nor does it want to take care of them. Instead it pawns off that chore to the municipalities where the properties are located. Although the municipalities can theoretically bill the state for the work, it’s a wasted effort. The Legislature has not put any money since 2016 into the fund from which reimbursements are supposed to be drawn, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, which has the responsibility for managing the tax-forfeited property.
In Greenwood, there are about 25 tax-forfeited properties owned by the state. They add to the headache and cost the city endures trying to deal with dilapidated property and overgrown lots.
A few years back, Delbert Hosemann, when he was serving as secretary of state, tried to help out by authorizing the city to sell what it could of the tax-forfeited properties, and the two government entities would divide the proceeds. The idea sounded good, according to Mayor Carolyn McAdams, but it was of only minor help because the city was unable to sell but a few parcels at the prices set by the state. Many of the lots, she said, were too small to accommodate a house under current building codes, even if a developer were interested.
So what’s the answer?
The first would be that the state behave like any other responsible property owner. It can either keep the lots mowed and clean, or it can pay the city for doing so. But it should stop being a freeloader.
If it’s not prepared to appropriate the funds to do that, it should cut municipalities a better deal. Let the properties be forfeited to the cities where they are located, rather than to the state, and give the cities the authority to put them up for auction at whatever price they can get. Even if the auction brought in less than supposedly “fair market value,” it would be worth it to get the properties back on the tax rolls and make someone other than the taxpayers responsible for their upkeep.
Maybe the new owners would be just as negligent as the previous ones and it would become a revolving door of properties being forfeited for unpaid taxes over and over again. That, though, would be no worse than the current situation.
At least it would be trying something different.
