Moratorium provides a reprieve

Chalk up a win for farmers — at least a temporary one.
Gov. Mike Pence signed into law Wednesday a bill that establishes a one-year moratorium on the use of soil productivity factors in assessing farmland values.
Critics would argue that the entire soil productivity measurement system being used by the state is out of whack, and the moratorium buys a year for review.
While, in theory, soil quality makes sense when assessing the value of farmland, but the reality has been that values were jumping in ways that didn’t make much sense.
Without a moratorium, property taxes on farmland were expected to jump by an average of 25 percent. Has there been a 25 percent jump in the productivity of farmland? Of course not.
During a recent “Third House Session” sponsored by the Jay County Chamber of Commerce, State Rep. Bill Davis (R-Portland) and State Sen. Travis Holdman (R-Markle) said the soil productivity standard was disproportionately affecting farmland on the edges of the state.
Why? Because farmland in those adjoining states was selling at higher prices per acre.
In other words, the two lawmakers were told, Ohio farmland prices were pushing Jay County farmland assessments higher, regardless of real world productivity of the soil.
The verdict is still out on what the impact of the moratorium will be. The law requires tax officials and agricultural researchers at Purdue University to review the soil productivity measurement standards and bring the issue back to the Indiana General Assembly for consideration next year.
So you’ll have to wait until 2014 to know whether this was a meaningful step or was just a matter of buying some time. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]