On June 12 in response to the introduction of Senate Bill 86, The Taxpayer Transparency and Fairness Act of 2017, by the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, Board of Equalization Member Jerome Horton stated:

“This bill has nothing to do with the BOE procurement or taxpayer event issues recently in the news; instead it replaces the current adjudicatory process with bureaucrats, with no accountability to the voters, who will decide the equity of audits of taxpayers by bureaucrats. ​It eliminates the firewall between the agency and the trier of fact and the employer, giving one person authority to hire and fire the trier of fact based on performance measurements, and will cause bias in the resulting decisions depending on who makes the appointment of the Director; much like what we face with the Supreme Court appointments.  I agree that there is a need for BOE reforms based on historical challenges dating back 25 years; however, this measure adds an additional layer of bureaucracy and will eventually cost taxpayers billions for separate computer systems, administration, lawyers, and facilities. This bill will also place minorities and small business at a serious disadvantage in their appeals of taxation.  It definitely requires additional thought, deliberation, and study.

“To protect taxpayers, I suggest an amendment to require that the administrative law judges (ALJs) be elected to eliminate the potential for “pay-to-play,” allow small business taxpayers to band together to file class-action lawsuits against the agency on key tax issues using the normal rules of civil procedure, create an independent Taxpayers’ Advocate Office to assure fairness in the process, prohibit performance evaluations of ALJs based on tax revenue collected, and to create a firewall between the ALJs and the agency.”