The March 15 Star Tribune article on property valuation and property taxation ("Taxes won't fall as fast as home values") missed an excellent chance to enlighten your readers of the real workings of our failed property tax system.

The article came the closest when it quoted Washington County Director Of Property Records Kevin Corbid as saying: "The value [of a property] by itself doesn't mean a thing." If the story followed that lead, the readers may have had the answer to their property tax problems.

This hypothetical may be of help. The beginning of one's property tax is not with the computation of the market value; it begins with government determining what funding it needs (or wants) for the coming year.

Let us say all the units in this taxing district -- schools, county government, city government, etc. -- set their budget at $60 million. The next step is to see what the assessors have determined the tax capacity of the taxing district to be. In other words, what the value of all property amounts to.

Let us say it is $50 million. The "what we want" doesn't match with "what we got." Never fear, government has a secret weapon -- the "tax rate." The tax rate is a multiplier used to get from the taxpayer the funds government wants -- in this case a tax rate of 1.2 percent brings government the $60 million it wants. If the tax capacity drops to $40 million because of a depressed real estate market, all that government needs to do to get the $60 million it wants is increase the tax rate to 1.5 percent.

The "tax rate" is government's ace in the hole.

In good times, government let the assessor raise real estate values so that the tax rate stayed neutral. This allowed government to claim it had not raised taxes (meaning the tax rate) when our taxes really did go up.

Now government is paying lip service to adjusting market values (tax capacity) and negating any change by increasing the tax rate. As Corbid said, "The value by itself doesn't mean a thing." This can be further expanded upon by the Department of Revenue's study of more than 70,000 sales, which compared what a property sold for and what the assessor had it valued at. Even allowing the assessor to miss by 5 points high and 10 points low, Minnesota assessors missed the bulls-eye -- an accurate estimate of a property's value - more than half the time. If they were allowed a 5-point above and 5-point below target, they missed a correct value more than 71 percent of the time. Would you choose a doctor who botched an operation 71 percent of the time?

Is there any wonder why the assessing department is girding for a flood of complaints?

Marlowe Hamerston, St. Paul, is the chairman of the Minnesota Senior Federation Tax Committee.