The counties and school districts who support a higher property value for Ameren Missouri's natural gas facilities will ask the Missouri Supreme Court this week to hear their case, attorney Richard Reed said Friday.
"It will be filed, probably, Monday or, at the latest, Tuesday," he said in a telephone interview from his office in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The initial appeal will involve the Sept. 26 ruling by the Kansas City-based Western District appeals court that Cole County Assessor Chris Estes didn't evaluate Ameren's Cole County facilities properly.
Ameren Missouri has natural gas distribution equipment in 25 Missouri counties, and it challenged the property assessments for 2013 (and since) in 16 of those counties, including Cole, Callaway and Moniteau counties in Mid-Missouri.
After each county's Board of Equalization upheld the local assessor's values, Ameren appealed all of those decisions to the State Tax Commission.
The commission accepted the counties' figures in an October 2015 order and Ameren filed a lawsuit in the circuit courts for each of the 16 counties where it was challenging assessments.
Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled in Estes' favor Aug. 1, 2016 - and other judges issued similar rulings in their separate cases.
Ameren appealed Beetem's ruling and others to the state Supreme Court, arguing the high court had exclusive jurisdiction under the Missouri Constitution because the appeals involved a revenue statute.
But the court declined to hear the cases then, instead sending the rulings to the appropriate appeals court district for each of the circuits.
The Western District's ruling on the Cole County case came first but, since late September, the appeals court's Southern and Eastern Districts have issued similar rulings - all sending the cases back to the Tax Commission for a re-calculation of the property values on which Ameren's taxes would be based.
Ultimately, Reed said, he'd like the Supreme Court to hear all of the cases together.
"The issues in the case are of vital importance to taxpayers and to units of government relying on taxes," he said. "The issues are of statewide importance."
Cole County officials have said the difference between Estes' assessed value of $17,040,760 for 2013, and Ameren's calculation of $6,559,522 for the same year, means the county's various taxing entities could lose around $600,000 in revenue - with Jefferson City's Public Schools alone losing about $400,000.
Although the numbers are different in each county, the results would be similar.
Ameren agrees the issues are important to taxpayers.
"Higher taxes means higher rates," Communications Executive Jenifer Hagen told the News Tribune last week, "because higher taxes are paid by our customers.
"Taxes are a pass-through cost paid by our customers."
In the 41-page September ruling, Western District Judge Cynthia Martin wrote that a main issue before the courts was the Tax Commission's decision to change its forms in 2013 from those used previously, including an instruction to county assessors "to arrive at a reasonable level of depreciation" for the natural gas equipment.
Hagen said: "Ameren Missouri has consistently followed tax guidelines for depreciation per the Missouri Tax Commission's required form of return."
But, Reed countered - and would like the Supreme Court to consider - Tax Commission guidelines are "not part of the commission's rules," and the 2013 forms were a suggestion rather than a requirement.
Still, Hagen said: "We maintain that overpaying taxes would hurt our customers. In following these tax guidelines, we are helping keep rates lower for all of our customers."