Yes, it's true: I'm suing the town of Tiverton. As one of sixteen plaintiffs listed in O'Dell vs. Tiverton, I stand to receive a tax refund sufficient to keep the power on at home for another month. Or perhaps next year, the dedicated folks who run extracurricular youth sports in Tiverton won't have to wait extra months for my family's registration fees.

That's the approximate amount that the town raised my property taxes beyond the limits of the law in order to support a 7.8% increase of its tax levy, well above the 4.5% to which it should have been restricted for fiscal year 2011. Admittedly, even such large tax increases don't spark a visceral reaction when the value of one's property is as far below the in-town average as that of Piddlinghouse, as I've dubbed the Katz family homestead.

Of course, as it compounds year after year, that unjustly confiscated $100 will wind up costing my family $1,800 by the time my youngest child heads off toward independence, assuming the town keeps to the 4% cap from here on. If the town maintains the trends of the past decade, the $100 will have turned into $2,300. At that point, property taxes will be equivalent to half of my mortgage payment.

Money, however, is not the issue. Fairness is. Playing by the rules is.

The language of the tax-cap legislation is clear:

Any levy pursuant ... in excess of the percentage increase specified in ... this section shall be approved by the affirmative vote of at least four-fifths (4/5) of the full membership of the governing body of the city or town or in the case of a city or town having a financial town meeting, the majority of the electors present and voting at the town financial meeting shall also approve the excess levy.

The regulations that the Rhode Island Department of Administration Office of Municipal Affairs developed in order to execute the law are also clear:

No later than fifteen (15) calendar days prior to adoption of the annual operating budget, a city/town may petition the Department of Administration (Department of Revenue) to override the levy cap in accordance with amended RIGL Section 44-5-2(d)(1) or (3).

According to Tiverton's town charter, it is the financial town meeting (FTM) that adopts the annual operating budget. Therefore, if the town's budgeting process determines that breaking the tax cap is necessary, based on a limited number of acceptable reasons, the local government must have its petition certified by Municipal Affairs prior to the meeting. As the "governing body" of the town, the council must vote by at least four-fifths to exceed the cap, and the financial town meeting "shall also" approve the increase.

Last year's budget process deviated from these requirements in two critical ways. First, the Budget Committee managed to keep its final levy request below the cap, so there was no need to petition the state for a waiver. To skirt that fact, Town Administrator James Goncalo submitted to the state a falsely modified version of the "notice of proposed tax rate change" that the town is required to issue prior to the town meeting, requesting some sort of promise that Municipal Finance would certify a waiver for the 9.04% after the fact. Ultimately, rather than a public announcement that the path was cleared for such a massive tax increase in the midst of a recession, permission came as an informal email to Goncalo on the eve of the FTM from brand new Municipal Finance Chief Susanne Greschner.

With the FTM approaching, Greschner explained to Goncalo on May 6 that the town would be required "to apply for and receive formal approval from [her] office prior to exceeding the property tax cap." In a reply email, the next day, Goncalo asked if she'd really meant to include the word "prior," and Greschner backpedaled:

The Financial Town Meeting could vote to exceed the property tax cap but the town also needs the Department of Revenue's approval under applicable law. That approval can be requested by the town in the event the Financial Town Meeting votes to exceed the cap on Saturday.

The factor that prompted Goncalo's question - and what Greschner had no expertise to understand - is that it is the explicit act of the FTM to set the levy. Once the vote is tallied, the levy is set and, in last year's case, the cap exceeded without state approval. 

The second deviation from legal requirements lies in the fact that the Town Council never voted to approve the increase. Not before the FTM. Not after. Never. Thus, the seven elected officials avoided having to go on record with official approval. Perhaps more importantly, they avoided unhelpful headlines prior to the town meeting. "Council Approves 9% Increase" might have spurred a few more "nay" votes to the high school gymnasium that fateful morning in May, after all.

The entire episode was further evidence that government in Tiverton, as in the rest of Rhode Island, has long been characterized by an insulated cooperation. Officials and bureaucrats willingly making things happen for each other, connecting the letters of the law in retrospect when called on their improprieties.

If the town and the state are to pull out of the spiral toward which such corruption has pushed them, residents will have to insist that the rules by which we operate must be followed, even when political insiders find them inconvenient and even when it's their judgment that taxpayers can afford the extra bill.