By Bill Raack, KWMU
St. Louis – Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton said the method of property tax assessment in the state needs to be investigated. So, he has created a task force to do that.
The 17-member task force will look at how assessments are done and what other states are doing to ease the pain of rising tax rates.
The chair of the task force, former representative Dick Roehl of St. Louis County, said he hopes to find a better way to tax residents for education and public services.
"In fact I looked this weekend at my own recent personal property tax reassessment and it went up 30 percent and I talked to some of my neighbors in south county who are retired and on fixed incomes and while I can probably afford the increase I'm going to see this year, there are a lot of people on those fixed incomes that can't," Roehl said.
The task force is made up county tax assessors, appraisers, citizens and state lawmakers.