Nancy Marshall Responds to Wall Street Journal
Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles partner and New Orleans Assessor Nancy J. Marshall's response to The Wall Street Journal's August 30th editorial titled "Property Tax Flood: The Real Battle of New Orleans" is reprinted below. To read the original article, click here.
You write "Property taxes in the city are suddenly rising by hundreds in some cases thousands of dollars . . ." They are not. Assessments, i.e. valuations of properties, are rising to their correct values. In fact it appears clear that tax rates will fall, perhaps by as much as a third. Those who have never paid taxes commensurate with the value of their property will experience tax increases. Some will experience a reduction. New arrivals and returnees will no longer be penalized by paying the lion's share of the taxes in their newly purchased homes.
The people of New Orleans, fighting against entrenched interests, obtained the passage of a constitutional amendment to consolidate seven assessors into one assessor as of 2010. The people of my district, one of the wealthiest and most intact areas remaining in the city, voted, arguably against their short-term interests, for the benefit of the whole city. When our people come home they, as new purchasers of homes, will no longer be subsidizing the rest of the tax base.
We have not been blessed with a Churchill or Roosevelt in our hour of need. Certainly we have had corruption and inefficiency, as has every level of this country's government, every city and every state, including some who have leapt to ridicule us. It has been painful to hear arguments that New Orleans should just be eliminated as "too much trouble" as if the same argument could not be made against every highly subsidized aspect of our country from earthquake prone areas to low-lying coastal cities, flood and tornado prone areas of the midwest and arid deserts supported by enormous federally subsidized dams and infrastructure.
We have not received the support we should have from any level of government. We have had the extraordinary and much appreciated support of thousands of volunteers. And we have learned that we can force our government to make the right choices. We will rebuild New Orleans, house by house, tree by tree, levee by levee.
Nancy Marshall
Assessor, Sixth District
City of New Orleans
