So says Five Stone Tax Advisors CEO J.P. Krueger. Krueger says Travis County’s Appraisal District and Appraisal Review Board are wasting taxpayer money and skirting the law by denying informal protest hearings for property tax bills. “Instead of handling ten percent of the protests in past years, the ARB will now handle ninety percent of the protests, resulting in two million dollars in wasteful spending paid for by the taxpayers for all of that process.”
Krueger claims the Chief Appraiser Mayra Crigler is overvaluing property and not having any informal protest hearings where 90 percent of cases get settled, the only one in Texas to not do that. Krueger says instead the Appraisal Review Board is over-scheduling tax protests hearings. “The government proceeded to schedule our firm for nearly two thousand hearings in one day. That’s impossible and seems like retaliation.” Kruger adds, “Further it’s in line with what they did last year, when they purposefully over-scheduled our property owners’ accounts, and dismissed the hearings in doing so.” Krueger says the review board scheduled over 1900 protest hearings for one day for their clients, which he calls a disaster.
Krueger says it’s against the law for property owners to not get a hearing. “The Appraisal Review Board purposefully over-scheduling cases and then dismissing them in unlawful. The property owner has a right to a hearing.” Krueger says there is little to no oversight on the Appraisal District or the Review Board and is calling for Crigler to step down.
(KLBJ FILE PHOTO)
