By TIM ALEXANDER

Illinois Correspondent

MARINE, Ill. — A southern Illinois farmer is angry about the way the state is assessing his farmland value, and he has hired an attorney to try to do something about it.

Bill Drake, owner of Grandview Farms in Madison County, says legislators overstepped their boundaries when they voted to discard the Farmland Assessment Act in 2013 for a process that does not consider land productivity based on different types of soil when assessing property values.

He said that since the new assessment mechanism went into effect a couple of years ago, farmers south of Interstate 70 in southern Illinois, where farmland was formerly assessed a lower rate due to poorer soils, are being driven out of business. He also levels blame at the Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) for what he calls complicity in supporting the change after 30 years of a 10 percent cap on the amount farmland assessments can vary from year to year.

“It is a completely unfair tax system that was put through by Farm Bureau, which is now corrupted and in the pocket of northern Illinois. It was snuck in without the knowledge of a single person down here – not a single person. You can quote me; our Farm Bureau does not represent us,” Drake told Farm World on Feb. 13.

He is putting his money where his mouth is – he has retained attorney Ted Armstrong to review the constitutionality of the 2013 legislative amendment, which, according to Brenda Matherly of the IFB, “was necessary to help protect the intent of the farmland assessment law, which allows farmland to be assessed based on its productivity potential rather than its market value.”

Matherly, IFB director of local government, made the statement in an essay published in the May/June LINK (Local Information, News and Know-How) newsletter for IFB members. (An email sent to the IFB seeking comment on whether the current farmland assessment formula in Illinois should be reexamined received no response, by press time.)

The problem with the new formula, according to Drake and other southern Illinois farmers, is that not only are assessments going up, they are higher than the previous 10 percent cap placed on assessment values would have allowed.

“We have farmers being taxed at a rate where they can never farm again, and land is being taken out of production. I have hired an attorney and explored whether counties can option out of this, but the fact is, they can’t,” Drake said. “Everyone (now) has the same tax rate of $56 per acre across the state.

“We have had a tripling of our taxes down here. My average tax down here on all my properties was $12 per acre, and it went to $56. With these low (commodity prices), there is not a single profitable farm down here. They need to revert back to the old, fair system.”

Drake has registered his complaints with his county Board of Trustees, which led to him making the acquaintance of another disgruntled southern Illinois farmer, Bob Daiber. Daiber, who grows soybeans, corn and wheat on about 120 acres in Madison County, is running as a Democrat in the Illinois 2018 gubernatorial primary.

“If I am elected governor, I will do all I can to restore fairness to Illinois’ broken system of farmland value assessments, including restoring the old system,” he said in a phone call. “Farmers in southern Illinois are suffering because of it.”

Drake estimates he has spent $7,000-$8,000 of his own money in attorney fees to date seeking a legal runaround the assessment law, to no avail. “So now everyone pays the same – the farmers that always get 200-plus (bushel harvests of corn), and people down here.

“Everyone knows that if your average yield in the north is going to be 200, it’s going to be 150 here and 125 down in Washington County. That’s the average for five years, 10 years or 50 years,” he said, adding he would love to see the Illinois General Assembly address the issue this spring.

He said planting higher seed populations to encourage better harvests does not work. The poorer soils in southern Illinois – some of his have a 70 or below Productivity Index (PI) ranking, he noted – won’t accommodate higher seedings.

“With our bad soils and bad years, we are being taxed completely unfairly. This is obvious to the universe. We have the exact same input costs, so it is an absolutely unfair system,” said Drake, who also works a few hundred acres of farmland under the Grandview Farms banner in upstate Tazewell, McLean and Clinton counties, and operates a small 20-head cow-calf finish operation producing Star Primo Angus Beef.

The IFB has estimated the cap adjustment associated with the new Illinois farmland values assessment system could take between 15-20 years to even out.