More than $6.1 million. According to Kingfisher County Treasurer’s Office data, that’s the total amount of ad valorem taxes being protested by certain oil and gas and wind energy companies in the last four tax years. Broken down by tax year, that total includes: $333,645 in tax year 2015; $2,345,578.85 in 2016, $837,269.38 in 2017 and $2,584,054.86 in 2018. Those amounts represent the difference between what protesting companies agree they owe and the total the county says is due based on the assessor’s office valuation of the company’s property. Protesting companies are required to pay the full tax owed, but the disputed amounts above are sitting in an escrow account – and thus unavailable to the school districts and other entities funded by them – until the disputes are decided by the courts. About half of the total unpaid taxes are assessed against wind energy companies, including $1.55 million in 2016 taxes assessed against Kingfisher Wind in southern Kingfisher County and $1.562 million in 2018 taxes assessed against Red Dirt Wind in the northern part of the county. The remainder is under appeal by various DCP affiliated companies, including DCP Operating Co., DCP Southern Hills and DCP Midstream.

Affect on Schools

Every county school district is impacted, along with Chisholm Trail Technology Center, the county general fund, health department and Cashion, Kingfisher and Logan County emergency ambulance services, all of which are supported to greater or lesser degrees by county property taxes. Losses to each of these entities, according to data provided by the county treasurer’s office, includes:

County general fund

Total – $788,785.76

County health department

Total –$157,449.96

Cashion EMS

Total –$49,125.79

Kingfisher EMS

Total –$130,609.13

Logan County ambulance

Total –$3,025.18

Cashion Schools

Total –$971,215.60

•$626,489.43 general fund,

•$83,022.59 building fund,

•$261,703.58 sinking fund.

Dover Schools

Total –$536,572.97

•$422,898.34 general,

•$58,537.97 building,

•$55,136.56 sinking.

Hennessey Schools Total –$877,077.73

•$610,267.22 general,

•$76,594.26 building,

•$190,216.25 sinking. Kingfisher Schools Total –$492,414.94

•$367,123.87 general,

•$34,585.23 building,

•$90,705.84 sinking. Lomega Public Schools Total –$245,552.33

•$189,843.41 general,

•$24,285.55 building,

•$31,423.77 sinking. Okarche Public Schools Total –$499,411.57 total

•$105,710.93 general,

•$107,008.97 building, $286,691.67 sinking). Chisholm Trail Technology Center – $275,490.45. Numbers for Okarche, Cashion and Lomega school districts don’t include their losses of Canadian, Logan and Blaine county property tax dollars which also may be under protest.

Likewise, school districts bordering Kingfisher County which also extend across the county line are losing some funds from the Kingfisher County protests, including Cimarron, Covington, Crescent, Okeene, Piedmont and Francis Tuttle Technology Center.

While some of those escrowed funds may eventually be disbursed to schools and other entities, the exact amount is impossible to determine.

In addition to being reduced by court decisions that may award money back to the protesting companies, the totals will also be depleted by the cost of lengthy and ongoing litigation.

Many administrators share the frustration of Hennessey Superintendent Dr. Mike Woods, who noted in a recent board meeting that his sinking fund has a negative balance of $45,000 due to the Red Dirt tax protest.

Meanwhile, Cashion Superintendent Sammy Jackson said “I don’t even want to know how much” his district hasn’t received due to protests.

“We’ll just continue to budget and run our school as if that money isn’t even sitting out there,” he said.

Solutions or Resolutions?

All eyes are on the first of the wind farm protests filed in 2016 by Kingfisher Wind in Kingfisher and Canadian counties which may finally be resolved this fall.

Those lawsuits have been consolidated and are scheduled for nonjury trial in November in Canadian County District Court in El Reno.

District Judge Jack D. McCurdy II recently denied a motion by the wind farm to exclude the testimony of Jerry Wisdom of the Arkansas company Total Assessment Solutions Corp., a private contractor utilized for years by Kingfisher and many other Oklahoma counties to assess the value of oil and gas assets for tax purposes.

Since the evolution of wind energy, Wisdom and TASC have been tapped to assess those assets also and Kingfisher Wind argued in its motion that wind energy production is distinctly different from oil and gas mining and Wisdom lacks expertise and training in that industry.

In his order denying Kingfisher Wind’s motion, the trial judge said he would be able to determine what weight, if any, to give to Wisdom’s testimony in rendering his final verdict.

This month, some State Legislators started bringing stakeholders to the table, including energy industry representatives, county government and school officials, to discuss possible legislation to standardize valuation methods applied by all 77 counties to energy assets for taxation purposes.

Energy companies have argued that a lack of consistency from county to county results in different valuations for the same projects that extend through multiple counties, such as pipelines or wind farms.