Local and state officials responsible for administering Wyoming’s property tax system are in uncharted waters. A recently adopted state law has skewed assessed values across the state, creating significant disparities between how one home may be taxed compared to another down the street.
The Wyoming Constitution requires all taxation “be equal and uniform” and all property be taxed at its “full value.” And it’s the constitutional duty of the State
Board of Equalization to ensure equal and uniform assessment across counties.
However, a tax cap passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2024 to relieve homeowners has put the board in a bind, a report released Thursday by the panel concluded.
“The caps generated thousands of value ‘inversions’ in each county, wherein a residential property with a higher market value than another property is assessed at a lower taxable value than that property,” the 32-page report, prepared by the board, states. “The difference is often substantial, and the reasons for the disparate tax burdens are arbitrary.”
Because of this non-uniformity, the board says it cannot certify residential land or improvement values. The report warns that a non-certification could prevent local governments from collecting 2026 property taxes on residential properties — a key source of funding for public services like K-12 education, roads, sewers and law enforcement.
“This is so unprecedented, we don’t really have a blueprint,” Martin Hardsocg, board vice chairman and main author of the report, told WyoFile Friday.
“There’s nothing in the history of Wyoming that comes close to this,” he said.
Local officials are scrambling for answers, too. Converse County Assessor Dixie Huxtable told WyoFile that she, like other assessors, is waiting to hear back from her county attorney’s office about how to proceed. In the meantime, assessors are in a confusing position, Huxtable said.
“Under our oath, we are required to follow the laws of the state of Wyoming, and currently, in the law is the 4% cap. There is also language in the statutes, there are duties that say that we are to honor all orders of the state Board of Equalization in regards to property tax valuation,” Huxtable said. “Those seem to be in conflict with each other.”
So, if local governments can’t collect 2026 property taxes, what will that look like on the ground?
“That’s a very good question,” Huxtable said Friday. “Not 100% sure. This is unprecedented. It’s never been done this way.”
Neither lawmakers nor Gov. Mark Gordon’s office can say they weren’t warned about the cap’s consequences. The board testified as much when the law was still under debate during the 2024 session. And shortly before the cap went into effect, the board met with the governor’s staff to warn that it “would not withstand constitutional scrutiny,” according to the report.
In January, after the board had readied a legal complaint to challenge the cap, Gordon directed the board not to file a lawsuit.
“We know some have raised this question since the Legislature passed the 4% cap on residential property assessments. But, the Governor is not willing to make a statement while we review the Board’s decision,” Amy Edmonds, Gordon’s spokesperson, told WyoFile in a statement Thursday.
As part of a slate of 2024 tax bills aimed at lowering the burden for homeowners, the Wyoming Legislature created a tax exemption structured as a tax cap. More specifically, the law caps annual property tax increases at 4%, even if the real estate’s value grows at a higher rate.
At the time, lawmakers argued that structuring the cap as an exemption would provide a way to work within the confines of the Wyoming Constitution while still providing immediate relief to taxpayers struggling with ballooning taxes from swiftly rising housing prices.
“In testimony before legislative committees, the State Board warned of the residential tax system’s immediate unconstitutional shift upon enactment of the caps,” the report states. (Emphasis added in the report.)
But “the momentum was, ‘we got to get the taxpayers relief today,’” Hardsocg told WyoFile, adding that the board encouraged lawmakers to seek property tax relief in other ways, such as through refunds or other measures already in place.
“Then they voted for it anyway,” Hardsocg said. “It really is the perfect storm, where they were intent on giving relief, and they were not going to be bothered with — and I hated to say it that way, but it’s kind of true — they were not going to be bothered with the problems that we were arguing would arise with the constitution.”
Sponsored by Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, who was a House member at the time, the bill was widely supported by lawmakers in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle. On final reading in the House, representatives voted 60-1, with one excused, in favor of it. In the Senate, only one member — Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander — voted against it on final reading before it was sent to Gordon, who signed it into law.
Crago did not respond to WyoFile’s request for comment by publishing time.
Jackson Democrat Rep. Liz Storer, who has focused on property taxes during her time in the Legislature, told WyoFile the cap was meant to be a temporary solution.
“At the time, we didn’t have any other tools in the toolbox,” Storer said, adding that since then, Wyoming voters approved a constitutional amendment to segregate residential real estate from other forms of property for taxation purposes.
The board’s report, Storer said, makes “a pretty good argument for the fact that the cap has created significant problems with uniformity and fairness.”
In the process of finding enough lawmaker consensus to pass property tax reform, Storer said, “we’ve ignored the constitution.”
“It’s been very confusing and problematic as a result, right?” she said.
Lawmakers have developed such a complicated web of residential property tax exemptions that, starting last year, some members began suggesting eliminating property taxes altogether to solve the confusion.
Editor’s note: Rep. Liz Storer also serves as president and CEO of the George B. Storer Foundation, which is a financial supporter of WyoFile. The foundation has no role in WyoFile’s editorial content.
After the cap was signed into law, the three-member board took its concerns to the governor’s office, according to the report, meeting several times over the course of two years. Board members also expressed unease in their annual votes to certify assessment values.
In 2024, for example, one member voted not to certify any county’s residential values. The next year, when the board had only two members due to the retirement of former Chairman Dave Delicath, its two members voted to certify, “but qualified their votes on the recording explaining that the values were likely invalid,” the report states.
The board also tried to resolve the issue in 2025 when it planned to order assessors to discontinue the cap exemptions — state law requires assessors to honor all the board’s orders regarding property tax valuation.
“The Order would have required that the Department of Revenue and assessors disable automated application of the caps,” the report states. “Upon notifying the Governor’s office, the Governor’s Office asked that the State Board refrain from issuing the order.”
Meanwhile, the board began discussing “an alternative course of action” with the governor’s office and the attorney general’s office, which would have involved a legal challenge, according to the report.
“The Governor’s Office authorized litigation funding and advised the State Board to move quickly,” the report states. “The State Board hired outside legal counsel to represent it in the planned action.”
In January, WyoFile confirmed that the board was preparing to challenge the tax cap. Gordon, however, directed the board not to file a lawsuit, arguing the timing would “only be more confusing to taxpayers and cause concern with the county assessor’s process.”
“In the complaint, our attorneys wrote, ‘How does the board certify numbers and values that are wrong?’” Board Chairman Jayne Mockler told WyoFile Friday.
“That was what we were going to be faced with in June,” Mockler said, referring to when the board reviews county property tax abstracts.
“And now it’s June,” she said.
The report details several ways in which the 4% tax cap creates disparities.
Owners who remodel the inside of their homes may retain the cap, while someone who expands a structure’s foundational footprint often loses the benefit. Additionally, someone who purchases a home, for example, loses the cap benefit and is taxed at full value, while neighbors with capped assessments pay less.
“After three years, there are numerous instances of this nonuniformity (sold vs. unsold assessed values), and the disparity in assessed values will only increase as homes in rising markets sell when compared with capped properties that have not sold,” the report states.
Some lawmakers had argued property tax reform was needed, in particular to help working-class families stay in their homes. But the report suggests the cap tends “to discriminate in favor of more valuable properties, insulating them from property value increases, while often leaving less-valuable properties to be taxed nearer or at fair market value each year,” the report states.
In Teton County, for example, the top 10% of properties by value pay taxes on less of the value, while the lowest 10% of properties by market value pay taxes on closer to 100% of fair market value.
Still, taken altogether, “the State Board lacks authority to declare a statute unconstitutional,” the report states. Only the Wyoming Supreme Court can do that, Mockler told WyoFile on Friday.
“We didn’t say it’s unconstitutional, we say it’s not uniform,” she said.
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This story was originally published by WyoFile and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
