Stop squawking and count your blessings, buddy. Your home’s assessed value went up 400% , but your tax bill only went up 10% this year.

Photo above - this oil refinery in Delaware saw its property taxes decline this year, while ordinary homeowners face reassessments as high as 400%

Property taxes are a notoriously controversial issue with voters. Politicians have an almost irresistible urge to abuse this revenue source. Things got so bad in California that in 1978 voters passed a law (prop 13) limiting home tax increases to 2% a year. California politicians nearly lost their minds.

Residents of Delaware probably wish they’d passed a similar law. After several years of NOT reassessing homes, the state’s politicians hired a company called “Tyler Technologies” to reassess every home and business property in the state. But without actually entering those properties, or conducting any other sort of look-see.

The result, as you might expect, has been a disaster. Some homes were revalued 400% higher. The total amount of business property tax declined amazingly. The state legislature is in full retreat, and calling for an investigation of . . . well, not of itself, even though they’re the ones who selected Tyler. They now think Tyler may have been incompetent.

It’s not as if there weren’t any warning signs. Between 2014 and 2024 Tyler Technologies was sued dozens of times, both in civil court and class action suits, and had to pay out millions in damages for similar snafu’s. Evidently Delaware’s legislature still has dial up internet access, if they couldn’t find out anything about the company they hired.

Wait, it gets worse. It’s not just the counties which uses Tyler’s real estate assessment guesses. Local school districts piggyback on those values, with another layer of property tax of their own. And if you live in a city with a municipal property tax ! All 3 tax bills might go up.

By law, school districts can only increase your taxes 10% a year in Delaware. Even if someone says your property is worth 400% more after a drone photo. So it’s quite possible that Delaware homeowners could face another 10% hike in 2026, and the year after, and the year after that.

Any property assessment which REDUCES taxes on corporations, forcing private citizens to make up the difference, is at best incompetent, and possibly corrupt if they handed out freebies to corporations in the state.

Delaware’s voters will have to wait until the next general election on November 3, 2026 if they don’t like how their state representative increased their tax bills. But to change governors they can't act until 2028. Local politicians are of course hoping that this will all have blown over by then. They're probably asking themselves how long can people stay mad at them for a 10% annual tax hike. California might provide an answer to this.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Dover must address Delaware's reassessment crisis. Fix our tax system | Editorial

Tyler Technologies - Wikipedia