Our Say: Sorry, taxpayers: Smaller assessments won't provide relief 'Extraordinary cause'

New property assessments were mailed last week to many Anne Arundel County homeowners. At least some of those homeowners may have been anticipating the only pleasant gust imaginable from the current economic ill winds - that the likely decrease in the assessed value of their property would be followed by a decrease in their property taxes.

If so, they are going to be starting 2009 with a disappointment.

According to the state Department of Assessments and Taxation, the values of homes in the area covered by the reassessment - Annapolis and the central and southern parts of the county - have fallen by 4.2 percent.

But homeowners could likely see an increase in their property tax bill even if their assessment has gone down, say, 20 percent. That's because county law - far more generous than the state Homestead Tax Credit's 10 percent cap - limits property tax growth to 2 percent a year.

As assessments rocketed up, most county residents were not paying taxes on anything close to the full assessed value of their homes. Now, even if those assessments have cratered, those residents are probably still being taxed on less than the full value, and there is ample room for the tax to keep going up 2 percent a year.

That's good news for government officials - who need every cent they can rake in - and rotten news for homeowners who don't see any other relief on the horizon.

GOOD FOR county Circuit Court Judge William C. Mulford II. The judge reached for the only legal tool available to make sure that a sex offender charged with molesting a 9-year-old girl in Brooklyn Park remains in state custody.

Otherwise, Robert William Hoffman stood a good chance of being released under a 2006 state law specifying that charges must be dismissed against any defendant still found incompetent to stand trial after five years. Mr. Hoffman, who is at Rosewood Center at Owings Mills, was charged with the molestation in 1987 and, since 1991, has repeatedly been found incompetent to assist in his own defense.

The doctors say he is "mildly retarded" and needs 24-hour supervision. Mr. Hoffman continues to talk about his love of children and, the prosecutor said, has a record that includes decades worth of sexual allegations involving children, animals and fellow patients at Rosewood. If he had been released under the 2006 law, he would not even have been monitored by the state Department of Parole and Probation or gone onto the state's sex offender registry.

Fortunately, the law has a built-in panic button of sorts: a finding of "extraordinary cause to extend time." And fortunately, Judge Mulford used it.

As our story on this showed, there's an argument over whether the law worked as it was supposed to or needs review. But there's no argument that, in this instance, the judge did the right thing - putting the safety of children first.