Board of Tax Appeals says caseload surge is driving staffing requests in FY27 budget

Jacob Klesby, fiscal analyst with KLRD assigned to the Board of Tax Appeals, presented the agency’s budget package and explained the FY26 baseline: total BOTA expenditures of about $2.7 million with $1.5 million from the state general fund and 16 full-time equivalent positions.

Klesby said the agency has an ARPA-funded modernization project with roughly $117,000 remaining, which BOTA is requesting authority to spend for milestone-based implementation costs. He described enhancement requests for additional FTEs and market-rate adjustments that the Legislative Budget Committee and the governor removed from recommended funding.

Kristen Wheeler, chair of the Board of Tax Appeals, told the committee the board’s aggregate caseload rose from just under 7,007 cases to almost 8,400 in the past fiscal year, a high since at least 2015. Wheeler said the increase—particularly residential valuation appeals and small-claims filings—has slowed case processing and is the primary rationale for the legal assistant and administrative assistant requests. She noted turnover of about 25% of staff (4 of 16 positions) and confirmed one long-term staff attorney is retiring and being replaced by a newly hired attorney in training.

Committee members asked whether vacancies or pay changes explained recent salary increases. Klesby said some of the FY24 salary base reflected vacancies and a long-term attorney’s impending retirement; Wheeler added that judicial and nonjudicial pay changes also contributed to differences in reported salary totals. Members suggested evaluating whether improvements in case-management software could reduce staffing needs; Wheeler said the modernization project is already in progress with milestone-based ARPA payments and flagged tradeoffs between software investment and staffing.

What’s next: the committee will consider the budget in follow-up sessions; Wheeler offered to provide caseload comparison numbers and indicated BOTA will withdraw the taxpayer-advocate enhancement because that position will likely be created in the Department of Revenue.