Rodger Reedy – Missouri House of Representatives Newsroom

House Votes to Rein In Vehicle Assessments

The House voted unanimously this week to ensure that Missourians would not experience increases in the taxes they pay for vehicles ever again.

*Representative Rodger Reedy (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

House Bill 816 is the latest attempt by representatives to block something that happened post-Covid from being repeated. During and after the pandemic supply lines for parts and vehicles were hindered, and the demand for, and value of, used vehicles was inflated. That meant Missourians’ property tax bills also increased.

“If you will remember, in 2021 and ’22, people saw the assessment values go up on their cars and when those assessments went up their taxes went up, and that was kind of caused by the market value of used cars,” recalls bill sponsor Rodger Reedy (R-Windsor).

He told his colleagues in the House Chamber, “Many of you in this room, if you go back and look at your tax bills from ’21, ’22, ’23, you are paying more money on the same car that was a year older, that had maybe 20 or 30 thousand more miles on it, and it was not right.”

Reedy said part of the problem is that state law requires assessors to use the October issue of the National Automobile Dealers Associations (NADA) Used Car Guide to determine the value of vehicles. Reedy and others have proposed for several years now that the law allow the State Tax Commission to select a publication from those available, for assessors to use that year.

“I don’t believe that we should be putting in statute that you have to do business with a certain company, and this corrects that … they may be one that bids on it and they may be the best bidder, but it gives the other companies the opportunity to do that as well,” said Reedy. “What they would do is do a bidding process with different companies to provide that information and then, basically, they would probably use the lowest and best bid, which in turn would save taxpayer dollars.”

Reedy’s proposal would also state that no vehicle can be assessed at a value greater than it had, the year prior.

Though the proposal has not reached the governor’s desk in past years, that has not been for lack of bipartisan support.

*Representative Kemp Strickler (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

Lee’s Summit Representative Kemp Strickler (D) said the bill would be, “a great way to make sure that the issues that we saw during Covid don’t reoccur, where again, those used car values, those should be going down and the amount that people pay on those should be going down. We know that there was an artificial bubble back then. I think this does a really good job of addressing that and making sure the taxpayers aren’t on the hook if that happens ever again.”

Representative Del Taylor (D-St. Louis) called the tax increases during Covid an “anomaly” that should be prevented, “and basically he’s saying that no, the assessment cannot exceed what it was last year. Excellent idea.”

HB 816 receive no “no” votes in three House committees and the full Chamber, the latter of which voted 157-0 to send it to the Senate.

House plan would stabilize Missourians’ vehicle property tax values

Missourians in recent years have been slapped with high and increasing property tax bills for their vehicles, and state lawmakers are going to try again this year to stem that.

The issue has been a top one for two legislators who were assessors before they came to Jefferson City.

One of them is Representative Rodger Reedy (R-Windsor), who sees his House Bill 1690 as a taxpayer protection act.

“We are trying to do this to make it better for our taxpayers and to be more fair to them,” Reedy said.

The other is Representative Brad Hudson (R-Cape Fair), who said when he was an assessor, “I would have never wanted to sit across the desk from someone and say, ‘Hey, you know that farm truck that you’ve got? Yeah, it’s a year older, yeah it’s got more miles on it, but I’m going to hit you with a higher assessment this year and you’re going to have to pay more in property taxes because of that.’ That doesn’t make sense. It’s not right.”

The issue with vehicle valuations began in 2020 when the COVID pandemic halted supply lines. Parts for vehicles were harder to come by this inflated the demand for, and therefore the values of, used vehicles.

“So what the end result has been, you would have the same vehicle and it would be a year older but the trade-in value would show to be higher, so your assessment would be higher and you would pay more taxes on that vehicle that’s a year older,” Reedy explained. “I basically, fundamentally think that if that vehicle’s a year older, typically you’ve got 20-30 thousand more miles on it, you should not be paying more taxes on it than you did the year before.”

Hudson agreed, “Around COVID with supply chain issues, things going on, there was just this perfect storm that created what some would call a ‘funky market,’ or a ‘false market,’ and that actually put assessors in a position where if they were going to do their job according to state statute, many of them felt like they would have to be raising the assessed value of vehicles.”

The state statute to which Hudson refers dictates that assessors must use the October issue of the National Automobile Dealers Association’s (NADA) Used Car Guide to determine the value of a motor vehicle. Reedy’s bill would allow the State Tax Commission to designate a different nationally produced automobile guide to be used by assessors. His proposal would also establish a depreciation schedule to be applied to the values set forth in that automobile guide.

*Representative Brad Hudson (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)*

“It makes sure that these used vehicles depreciate in value for taxation purposes,” Reedy said.

Hudson said the issue of inflated vehicle valuations has the potential to negatively impact every household in Missouri.

“People from all over our state pay personal property taxes, and in many cases they pay a lot in personal property taxes, and they expect their taxes to go up when they get a new vehicle … but when they have the same vehicles, when those vehicles are older, when those vehicles have more miles on them, they don’t expect their taxes to go up because of their vehicles’ value, and they shouldn’t have to. It’s just common sense that these vehicles should be going down in value every year,” Hudson said.

Reedy said the problem hasn’t abated on its own the passage of time, “I can give you a case where a vehicle that had a value of $7,300 in 2021 went to $7,600 in 2022. Even now, in ’23 that same vehicle has just dropped back to $7,500, so [the owner of] that particular vehicle will pay more taxes in 2023 than [they] paid in 2021.”

Both lawmakers said this is exactly the kind of issue Missouri lawmakers should be addressing on behalf of their constituents.

“It is common sense. You have folks that are working, struggling to make ends meet, some of them on fixed incomes, they have to plan ahead, and then they get hit with a higher tax bill because of something that was beyond their control. No, that’s not right and that’s something that the Missouri legislature should be fixing,” said Hudson.

This year’s version of this legislation was passed out of the House 150-0 before stalling out in the Senate. In 2022, Hudson carried a version of the bill that cleared the House 146-0 but also did not clear the Senate.

GALLERY: Historic African American Cemetery could be preserved by DNR under House bill

A cemetery that is historically significant, especially for the African American community at Clinton, Missouri, could be preserved by the Department of Natural Resources under a bill signed into law this year.

One of the veterans buried in Antioch Cemetery is Otis Remus Lyle, who served during World War I. He is buried next to his father, George. Otis’ wife, Nellie, remarried after his death and is also buried in Antioch. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The legislation authorizes the state DNR to acquire Antioch Cemetery in Clinton. It could turn the cemetery into an educational site to be operated by the state Division of Parks.

Many of those interred in the five-acre cemetery are people who were once enslaved. It was established in 1885, but the first burial occurred 17 years earlier; that of 36 year old James F. Davis, who died in 1868. Two acres of the site were deeded to Clinton’s African American residents in 1888, for $50. More land was gifted in 1940.

Representative Rodger Reedy (R-Windsor) sponsored the original version of the Antioch Cemetery language that became law this year, in his House Bill 395.

“The African American Community has been very instrumental to the development of this area. They’ve been a very big part of the history, and I just felt like it needed to be preserved,” said Reedy. “My concern was a lot of the cemetery board members were getting older and they were concerned about how it would be maintained in the future, and I just saw this as a way to make sure this is maintained from here on out.”

“I think our history is important and I think it’s always important to realize how we got to where we are today, and if we let places like this cemetery go by the wayside and not be maintained, our future generations are not going to be able to come back and look at the history,” said Reedy.

The earliest born individual in Antioch Cemetery is identified only as Aunt Mason, who was reportedly 106 years old when she died in 1887. Contemporary newspaper accounts said she was “probably” the oldest person in the state at the time. Papers recalled that while enslaved, Aunt Mason had been owned by at least four families, serving as a nurse for one. One of those may have been the family of a man who was a state representative at the time the Civil War broke out. It was around that time that she was freed, and for much of the time after that she lived alone. Papers claim she was later shunned by her neighbors as a “witch and a soothsayer,” but recall she was “remarkable,” and retained vivid memories of her early life. Hers is one of the many graves in Antioch that lacks a marker.

The cemetery is also the final resting place of several veterans, including Jackson “Uncle Jack” Hall, who fought in the Civil War and died in 1911, at the age of 108.

It also includes brothers Charles and Clarence “Pete” Wilson, who served in World Wars I and II, respectively. Charles served in France with the 92^nd Infantry Division; a segregated infantry division of the U.S. Army that inherited the “Buffalo Soldiers” nickname given to African American cavalrymen in the 19^th century. Clarence was a Sergeant in the Army Air Corps.

Those in the cemetery haven’t always been allowed to rest peacefully. In 1891, about two weeks after he was buried, the grave of Mat Wilson was desecrated and someone stole his body, leaving behind only his head and feet.

Burials at Antioch Cemetery have continued into the modern era, and the legislation will allow that to continue.

Click the left and right arrows below for more photos from Antioch Cemetery: