Legal bills rise in oil pipeline tax battle
Published Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — The legal bills continue to climb in the fight between local governments and major oil companies about the trans-Alaska oil pipeline’s property assessment.
Mayor Jim Whitaker has asked the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly to reserve $765,000 following a six-week court battle about the disagreement, first raised in 2006 and involving that year’s assessment. The requested funds would cover the trial’s cost, although appeals or similar cases covering later years’ assessments are expected.
The argument, pitting three communities against three oil companies that jointly own the 800-mile pipeline system, focuses on how much the pipeline should be worth for tax purposes. The communities — the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the city of Valdez and the North Slope Borough — have successfully pushed state assessors to increase the line’s value, leaving the owners on the hook for more property taxes.
Under Fairbanks’ tax cap, that extra revenue has lowered taxes for homes and businesses. Whitaker said it has meant millions in collective savings for residents.
“While the (legal costs) are high, it has been a particularly good deal to the community,” he told the assembly at a work session last week.
The Borough Assembly has scheduled a Thursday public hearing on the request. Lawyers for the two sides will present final arguments in the case in early November, according to the ordinance.
The requested $765,000 excludes the cost of appeals if the case, currently in federal District Court, is appealed to the Supreme Court, the borough’s attorney said last week.
The pipeline system is assessed at $9 billion, triple its 2006 value. The increase followed scrutiny by in-state assessors about old methods used to estimate the line’s worth.
Community Discussion
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Mayor Whitaker and the Assembly have handled the TAPS valuation exactly right. If the property owned by the little guy in this borough must, by law, be taxed at fair market value, shouldn't ExxonMobil, British Petro, and ConocoPhillips play by the same rules?
For too many years the pipeline has been undervalued and homeowners and businesses have had to make up the difference by paying their assessments based on an inflated mil levy. Property owners paid millions of dollars too much in property taxes as a result.
Fun fact:
At current oil prices the gross value of the oil owned by Alaskans moving through the pipeline is about 18- 20 billion dollars per year- or about $31,000 dollars per Alaskan.
The lawyers who work for big corporations worldwide should be scriptwriters for the theater of the absurd.
The psyops artwork performed by this fine slice of humanity is what feeds the pervasive drone of the mind numbing corpo-biz newsfeeds worldwide daily for decades, and now millennia.
This results in a bloated and clogged Just-Ice System that can't provide consistent basic legal services for the little guy.
Clogged dockets and plugged parkinglots in cityscapes across America is the Tug-of-War played by Tyrants and speculative freeloading stockholders who would be Titans.
This gross inefficiency of contentious monetary struggle foreshadows our efforts to provide maximum efficiency in energy production and distribution.
This is a psychotic waste of civilization's capital while good engineering talent often volunteer their efforts to keep the windmills turning and the solar panels charging in an overtaxed energy grid.
The Rod Serling School of Corporate Law keeps us all in the Twilight Zone.
Christopher: "..currently in federal, District Court,.."? I was under the impression that this case was in Alaska Superior Court, being heard before Judge Sharon Gleason with closing arguments scheduled for the first week of November...and an appeal would to the Alaska Supreme Court next step. Has this case been moved to Federal Court system?
Well when people fight they end up in court and our tax dollars pay for their stupidity in cases like this. If they had to use their own money the outcome would be different.
OK Mr. Jim show me where your big "saving the home owner money" is on my tax bill? Some how my bill keeps going up, how is that a savings? Must be some more of that Oboma math. It should be a crime for the lawyers to be allowed to steal that much money, and another crime for the borough to steal it from the home owners.
If Big Oil gets a break, we should all get a break.
You want to do business here, you'll pay just like everyone else.
What is so flippin hard about this? Does anyone honestly think that Big Oil is just going to fold up camp and go somewhere else? Of course not!
Distant Thunder, always a pleasure to read your take on things.. I often couldn't agree with you more as in this assessment of the big corp's abuse of power for the massive gain of a few at the expense of the many.
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