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The case will be remanded back to Franklin County Circuit Court to work out a settlement consistent with that decision, according to attorneys who litigated the case.
The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District ruled in April that the tax rates imposed and collected by the library district from 2000 through 2006 were excessively high because it unlawfully rounded up tax rates in violation of the Hancock Amendment.
In a scathing opinion, the appeals court reversed a decision by Franklin County Circuit Judge Cynthia Eckelkamp who sided with the library district when the case was tried.
"It's a victory for taxpayers," Byron Francis, an attorney with Armstrong Teasdale, which represented the taxpayers in the case, said Tuesday.
"If I were a taxpayer in Franklin County I would be glad to know there was someone like Judge Koehr out there looking out for my interests. We have the Hancock Amendment for a reason, like it or not, and we have to abide by it. It's like term limits. I understand the arguments on both sides of the issue, but it's the law - it has to be followed."
The tax lid amendment, named after its sponsor Mel Hancock, was passed by voters in 1980. The amendment requires state government and all political subdivisions to get voter approval to increase taxes.
Judge Koehr is Jack Koehr, a former St. Louis City circuit judge who retired to Franklin County in 1997. He has filed or participated in nearly a dozen separate legal actions against Franklin County taxing entities alleging Hancock violations.
"Obviously we're disappointed," Marc Ellinger, the attorney who represented the library district, said Friday. "We would have preferred that the Supreme Court heard the case because we thought it could have statewide implications."
Both attorneys said it was now up to Judge Cynthia Eckelkamp to craft a judgment consistent with the appeals court decision. They said the judge would have to establish the correct tax rate for the years in question and determine whether to issue refunds to taxpayers or reduce the tax rate in future years.
"I understand the plight of the library district but I felt very strongly from the outset that the outcome in this case would be the same as in the other cases we tried. The core issues were the same. The outcome was the same as my gut feeling," Francis said.
The case, Kenneth D. Roher, Bill V. Flurry, Jack Koehr vs. Linda Emmons, Collector of Franklin County, et al., is another in what has been a series of taxpayer challenges to property tax rates levied by Franklin County taxing authorities.
In this case as well as in previous cases, taxpayers alleged that the library district used an improper tax rate ceiling in calculating its 2000 property tax rates and the resulting higher tax rate levies constituted a violation of the Hancock Amendment.
The same argument was used successfully against the county in a companion lawsuit which eventually led to a structured settlement in 2006 where taxpayers received nearly $1.9 million worth of tax credits through 2010 after an appeals court ruled that the practice of rounding up did violate the Hancock Amendment.
The Franklin County Library District however refused to settle even though it based its tax levies on those set by the county.
The taxpayers in the case were seeking a variety of relief including an order declaring the library district's tax levy for the years 2000 through 2006 unlawful; a recalculation of the tax rates for the years in question; taxpayer refunds, punitive damages and attorneys' fees.
Francis said the amount of excessive taxes at issue in the library case were much smaller than what was at issue in the other cases.
