In July, 2014, ICC Head Bishop Gene Savoy Jr. sat down with the editor of the Community Communiqué (CC) to discuss the ongoing efforts by the Church-retained attorney/lobbyist firm to persuade Nevada lawmakers to amend the tax exemption law to include The Church’s Red Rock Sanctuary, on which The Church must currently pay thousands of dollars in property taxes annually. Following is an edited transcript of that discussion:
CC: Maybe you could talk about what’s going on right now, and after that go back and tell a little of the history of it, how it came about that The Church ended up paying tax on the Sanctuary, and then what’s happened over the past twenty years with that.
GS: It might be better to switch that around, if that’s ok with you.
To do the background first?
Yes, because it’s a chronology.
OK.
In 1980, ’81, and ’82, The Church purchased what is now the North Sanctuary of Revelation. We purchased that first, and then the South Sanctuary of Prophecy, over a period of about two to three years. And in 1982, The Church applied for property tax exemption under the religious property-tax-exemption law here in Nevada. And we were initially granted a property tax exemption by the Washoe County assessor through the advice of the Washoe County district attorney.
In 1984, the district attorney changed; there was a new district attorney, and the decision was reversed. So The Church tried to negotiate with the county through letters and meetings, and eventually it was determined, later that year, that we would file a lawsuit against Washoe County. That lawsuit lasted until 1992. Initially, we were successful in the county district court. To make a long story short, The Church won the case. Washoe County then appealed to the Nevada State Supreme Court, and that decision was overturned. The Church then had to pay back taxes from the beginning of the purchase of the properties, including penalties and interest, which was a substantial amount of money. If my recollection serves me, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $150,000, through 1992.
We have been paying taxes on the Sanctuary since then. It’s a strange situation in that certain improvements are exempt, but nonimproved areas of the Sanctuary, which we would basically consider open space, are taxed. So every five years, the assessor comes out to our Sanctuary and assesses what improvements we’ve made, which become exempt, and then the rest of the property is taxed. So, to date, from the purchase of the Sanctuary in 1980 through 2014, we estimate that The Community has expended between $400,000 and $500,000 over thirty-five years in property taxes and assessments.
Our goal always was to remedy the situation, and there are two ways to go about that. Our first option would be to file another lawsuit against the county, which is a very laborious process involving local agencies. You have to go through the administrative process and hearings. If you are denied, then you appeal to a higher board. If that is denied then you can file a lawsuit in the county district court. You go through that legal process, and it is mostly likely that the loser will file again at the Nevada State Supreme Court. You have to go through this process before you can then file a federal lawsuit for religious discrimination or to charge that the law is unconstitutional; that is, that the law does not treat all religions in the state equally. That is probably a ten-year process which would cost additional hundreds of thousand of dollars for attorneys and so forth.
The second alternative is to have the current Nevada law changed. And that can only be done through the state legislature. So that always seemed like the better route. So it’s been a waiting game. We’ve been waiting since 1992. In 2012 I was introduced to a lobbyist from the firm Hillerby and Associates, and we began discussing the situation at the Red Rock Sanctuary, and he took an interest in our situation. During that time Hillerby and Associates merged with the law firm Kaempfer Crowell, one of the largest law firms in the state. They have offices in Reno, Carson City, and Las Vegas. The merger of the lobbyist organization, Hillerby and Associates, with the law firm, Kaempfer Crowell, made a very good combination in regard to our particular situation.
We had initial discussions with the new firm, Kaempfer Crowell, in January 2013, and they advised us to begin some initial discussions with some of the legislators. We began discussing some of the issues with legislators, but the legislative session had already begun. In Nevada we have a legislative session for 120 days every two years. While we had support, theoretically and conceptually, from several of these legislators, it was too late to introduce any bills into the legislature to amend the statute. We entered, then, into an agreement in March 2014 with Kaempfer Crowell with the idea of introducing a bill in the 2015 legislature—in fact, you have to submit the bill prior to the beginning of the legislative session in February 2015.
What has transpired is that the first meeting Kaempfer Crowell had was with the Washoe County Assessor’s Office . . .
On The Church’s behalf.
Yes, on The Church’s behalf. And the Washoe County Assessor’s Office determined that if it were The Church’s intention to have the law changed and to submit a bill into the legislature to that end, they would not oppose it. The next meeting was with the district attorney’s office, who also said they would not oppose it. So where we are at this point is discussing the same matter with the legislators themselves. We had to wait until the primary season, the primary elections in June, were over in order to determine who they were going to have to talk to. So at this point they have talked to two legislators, who in the initial discussions are in favor and on board, and we are now in discussion with three other legislators, all from Washoe County. Evidently, the way this works is you get your county delegation on board—since we’re in Washoe County, you get the legislators from Washoe County on board—and if they’re on board, either one or two people can sponsor the bill, or they can do it as a committee, as the delegation itself, which is more powerful, since every legislator from Washoe County has no problem with it. So that’s where we’re at at this point in time.
Now, initially, the idea was to rewrite the existing law, but instead of that, I understand, the goal is to amend the law. Can you explain further?
That’s correct. The law is very broad, and what we decided—that is, the firm and The Church—is that we did not want to get into a huge “crusade” where we were changing the general property-tax- exemption law for the entire state, which would maybe cause county assessors statewide to oppose that; plus, we are not in the position to be the crusader for other religious organizations.
Nor do we need to be since they’re not doing what we’re doing.
Exactly. In the Nevada statutes there are almost thirty individual organizations—whether they’re fraternal, such as the Freemasons, or whether they are fraternities like at a university, or the Boy Scouts, for example—that are specifically named in the statutes as being exempt. So that is the route we have chosen to take, which is simply to name The Church, and specifically, the Sanctuary. The buildings that we own are already exempt under the existing law. It is only the raw land that is not. Because we are using the land for religious, educational, and wildlife purposes, we actually qualify for an exemption under those three statutes, and we will make that clear to the legislators. It seems that a simple naming of The Church and the Sanctuary for an exemption, as long as the property is not used for commercial purpose, is the way to approach the issue.
Now, just to clarify some pertinent points for those people who maybe haven’t been in The Community for very long or just aren’t familiar with this situation, how does the state view or categorize the Sanctuary lands?
Well, the purposes of the Sanctuary are threefold: worship for a religious purpose; educational, as it serves as the campus for the Jamilian University; and wildlife conservation, in as much as we have entered into agreements with the United States Department of Agriculture, some state organizations, the Division of Forestry, the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, and various other entities to protect the wildlife that exists there—and that seems also to be a great incentive for a lot of the younger legislators.
So, it’s been since last March that the law firm has been speaking to legislators. What has to be done now? What are the next steps, and if it is successful how long will it take?
My understanding is that once we get the verbal commitment of several legislators here in Washoe County, then the firm will draft legislation to be presented as a bill in the legislative session that begins in February. The final version of the bill has to be submitted sixty days before the commencement of the session. But prior to that, the draft is submitted to the Legislative Counsel Bureau in Carson City. They are the people that professionally review bills for language, to make sure that it fits into the language of the Nevada statutes. So the firm will draft it, send it to the Legislative Counsel Bureau in Carson City, who will review it. If they make any amendment, we will then alter the proposal, and then it has to be submitted sixty days before the session starts, which would be somewhere around the beginning of December, if not sooner.
Then once the legislative session opens, what happens then?
Well, it’s a long, drawn-out process that I’m not really educated on, but once the bill is proposed before a particular committee—this would probably be the taxation committee—it goes through a series of hearings and the lobbyist/law firm is present to make our presentation and our points, and hopefully, the committee passes it along to . . . and again, each house of the legislature has its own taxation committee so it has to be presented in each house, and hopefully, it moves along in each house and is then sent to a vote in each house, and then, if it passes, the governor signs it.
So sometime in May you should know whether it was successful or not? And if for any reason it might not be decided during that session does it carry over or . . . ?
It either goes forward or it dies. And then we’d have to try again in two years.
And I understand the law firm has been asking a certain fee from us over this time, and will they charge a different amount for the different processes, such as the drafting and submission, then the follow up would be another fee or . . . ?
Yes, I believe that’s basically correct. My understanding in my discussions with them is that for a fee—a very reasonable fee, I might add—of $10,000, they will have talked to the county, which they did; they will attempt to garner the support of the Washoe County delegation, which we are in the process of doing; they will draft the proposal, send it to the Legislative Counsel Bureau, submit it, and at that point, that’s as far as our agreement goes at this time. I think we would enter into a separate agreement for them to actually represent us when the session begins.
As lobbyists.
Exactly. And I don’t know what that agreement will be.
So that $10,000, we’re still paying it, or is it paid?
We’re still in the process of making those payments.
So further contributions would be welcome.
Contributions are always welcome!
And contributions for the upcoming session would, I imagine, be really helpful because it might be a little more active?
Yes, the law firm, at that point, would be actively lobbying legislators from other parts of the state on this particular point. Now, that probably would not be a long, drawn-out process, because we’re only talking about our little Sanctuary in Washoe County; it’s not affecting any other county or any other assessor or how they collect their taxes. So the idea is that if we can get the Washoe County delegation on board, then it should be a pretty simple process to let other people know, and most likely they would support it. But most of the time that our lobbyists would spend for us is in committee, being present at the committee meetings, making presentations to the committee on why they should approve the bill and pass it on to the full house for a vote.
OK. Any final comments?
Well, I have told the lobbyists that this is a very personal and emotional issue for the members of this Community, just solely based on the fact that in Washoe County, every religious organization is exempt from property taxes. Of course, the vast majority of those religious organizations merely have buildings, and that was what the law was designed to exempt when it was written in the 1800s. There are other organizations that have “vacant” or “open” lands that are exempt, but they have a little more clout than we do. So for us, as I mentioned to the firm, and will stress again, it’s a very personal and emotional issue and to be able to win this, it would put away a lot of hurt from the past, and I think, from a psychological point of view, would allow us to move forward in a different way as we continue in developing the Sanctuary.
Great! Thank you!
