Wyoming’s state-level property tax board told counties on Thursday that a 4% cap on yearly increases in residential property taxes is unconstitutional, and the counties shouldn’t let taxpayers have that exemption.
The State Equalization Board will refuse to certify this year’s property tax assessment figures if counties keep that cap on them, the report says.
The board’s two-person majority — Chair Jayne Mockler and Vice-Chair Marty Hardscog — wrote in the Thursday report that the 4% increase cap for residential property taxes has arbitrary impacts across the state.
It also disproportionately insulates high-end homes, and disfavors homeowners in more sluggish market areas, the report asserts.
But the report’s main point, and conclusion from the past two years’ tax data, is that the 4% cap violates the Wyoming Constitution’s call for equal and uniform property taxes within each class of property.
The board hasn’t yet issued an order requiring Wyoming’s county assessors to rework their pending tax bills without the cap.
But it expects to do so in the coming weeks after working with counties, Mockler told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday phone interview.
“We issued this report today that says if that cap doesn’t come off, Marty and I can’t vote to certify residential property taxes. Because they’re not uniform,” said Mockler. “It’ll be followed with an order ... (and) our goal is ultimately to remove the cap.”
Mockler noted that the board isn’t targeting the other, narrower exemptions with this report — like the 25% property tax cut passed in 2025 or the long-term homeowner exemption.
More than half of the state’s residential property tax values fall under the 4% increase cap, the report says.
But We Don’t Get A Tax Free Year
This kind of push from the state board is unprecedented, Converse County Assessor Dixie Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
But Wyomingites shouldn’t expect a tax-free year over the maneuver, she said.
“Everyone’s in agreement there will be residential property taxes for 2026,” she said. “This … is just a step in the process of getting different values the board feels is appropriate.”
The pending mandate leaves Wyoming counties somewhere between following the 4% cap requirement in state law and following another state law that tells assessors to obey the state board, she said.
“You’re asking us to go against the law? Under the law we have to apply the 4% cap and you’re saying we can’t,” she reflected from the report.
“It’s so bizarre it’s funny,” Huxtable added.
She said she was digesting the report Thursday afternoon, and had just been to a phone meeting with the board officials, assessors, and county attorneys.
Two days earlier on Tuesday, Huxtable had just urged the Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee to approach more changes to the state’s property tax law with caution, because assessors are always trying to keep up with the many changes lawmakers have brought in recent years.
Assessors are at the mercy of state law and are working hard to follow it, she’d said.
Reflecting on the board’s Thursday report, Huxtable told Cowboy State Daily that assessors are now trying to gain clarification on what to do in the coming weeks.
“We’re on standby,” she said, adding that from her meeting with the board, her impression is, “They’d be tickled pink to go to court” on this issue.
Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz said Thursday that he doesn’t know of any litigation on this currently, “but if there is a challenge, we will support what the Legislature did.”
Rep. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, who has since become a state senator, was the sponsor on the main bill the board’s Thursday report derides as unconstitutional.
Crago did not return a Thursday afternoon voicemail request for comment by publication.
Different Homes, Different Taxes
The board’s report points to inconsistencies across the Wyoming property tax structure.
People who upgrade their homes by changing the footprint of those homes lose the cap exemption to a reset that year, while people who upgrade only the interior do not, says the report.
It says some homes have had their tax bills so thoroughly capped, they’re paying less than half of the state-mandated property tax rate.
“The caps, by design, generate highly disparate tax consequences for identical taxpayers,” the report says.
It accuses the law of discriminating arbitrarily between different homeowners across Wyoming.
“The demarcation between taxpayers receiving a tax windfall, versus those who do not, serves no rational basis,” the document adds.
Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday that she had voted for the 4% tax cap during the tax hikes of 2024. But she views the law as more of a short-term fix.
"It was a tourniquet; it was a short-term fix," she said. "Butif you leave the tourniquet on, you damage the body."
Storer's home region of Teton County accounts for huge property tax revenues in Wyoming. She has tried over the years to get lawmakers to stop applying property tax breaks to people's secondary homes.
Of the $860.2 million in exemptions the 4% cap is expected to cause this year, Teton County accounts for $507.9 million, says a Department of Revenue memo Storer sent to Cowboy State Daily.
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The Lawsuit That Wasn’t
The board warned lawmakers before the 4% cap bill’s passage that board members believed it’s unconstitutional.
The cap passed anyway and “the die was cast,” says the report.
The board examined the residential assessment values and looked for inverted valuations, that is where higher-valued properties were assessed at lower taxable values than other, similarly situated properties.
The board during the 2025 tax calculation process had just two members, Mockler and Hardscog. They voted that year to certify the tax values, but said that those values were probably invalid. Still, they wanted to gather one more year of data to be sure, the report says.
They also planned to release a Nov. 13, 2025, order requiring assessors to stop giving the exemption.
Gov. Mark Gordon’s office asked the board not to issue that order, the report says.
In November and early December, the governor’s office and Wyoming Attorney General’s Office met with Hardscog and Mockler to talk about filing an action asking a court to judge the issue.
The governor’s office and AG’s office agreed the state board should file that court action, the report says.
The litigation was slated to be filed Jan. 20. Gordon’s office asked for multiple delays, at first to communicate the lawsuit with legislative leaders.
When Gordon’s office asked for another delay two days later, Hardscog and Mockler said they wouldn’t certify the property tax values after the June tax calculation process, “without a working resolution of their constitutional concerns,” says the report.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
