MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS 



production of revenue for the payment of pub- 

 lic expenses. It seems to be 'based upon the 

 idea that taxes are levied upon the land with 

 the hope that the land may ultimately become 

 the property of the state, and not to secure the 

 necessary funds to pay the obligations which 

 have been incurred by the state, counties, 

 townships and school districts. Acknowledged 

 by its promoters to be a makeshift, it is crude 

 and ambiguous in its terms." 



MR. SCHMIDT. "This paragraph is non- 

 sense. As the bill only provides for the with- 

 drawal of the lands until adequate laws can be 

 enacted, it does not go into the diverse prob- 

 lems involved in the care of delinquent tax 

 lands. As explained above, the bill was intro- 

 duced with a definite purpose, and its provis- 

 ions leave nothing to the imagination, which is 

 one of the reasons why it is opposed. Answer- 

 ing, however, the statement that it is based 

 upon the idea that taxes are levied with the 

 idea that the lands will ultimately 'become the 

 property of the state, it is well to call attention 

 to this fact: Taxes are levied on the timber 

 lands of the state for the purpose of creating 

 revenue. These taxes are paid until the lands 

 have lost their merchantable timber value, 

 when the owner stops paying taxes and allows 

 the lands to revert. Then, when the young 

 growth again becomes valua'ble, some one 

 buys up a few years' taxes, gets a tax title, and 

 proceeds to skin off what lumber may have 

 become valuable in the meantime. Then, auto- 

 matically, the tax payment stops, and the lands 

 again revert. The interval serves the country 

 newspaper to get its share of the state's 

 money in advertising these delinquent taxes, 

 and so the merry game goes on 'ad infinitum.' 

 The laws which are to follow this withdrawal 

 bill, and which have 'been introduced in the 

 house, will do away with this graft, and ex- 

 plains the attitude of some of the senate mem- 

 bers toward the bills." 



Another False Statement. 



RECORD.^'Trior to 1893 the State of 

 Michigan had tried many propositions in the 

 line of tax laws. So far as land taxes are con- 

 cerned they proved a failure, for the list of de- 

 linquent lands kept increasing. Taxes piled up 

 each year against lands already delinquent, 

 and the delinquent land taxes for the various 

 municipalities in northern Michigan embar- 

 rassed counties, townships and school districts 

 to such an extent that they were many times 

 unable to meet their expenses, and bonds and 

 orders were hawked about and sold for nomi- 

 nal consideration. The man foolish enough to 

 buy a tax title always reminded one of the 

 text, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' 

 Owners of land smiled complacently when 

 someone bought a tax title. It meant that 

 their taxes were paid for that year without ex- 

 pense to them. But the tax law of 1893, with 

 its amendments, changed this. 1'n many north- 

 ern Michigan counties prior to 1893 the tax 

 list included 40 per cent of the land of the 

 county. Under the provisions of this law these 

 lists have decreased to an average of less than 

 5 per cent at the present time. A decrease 

 from 40 per cent to 5 per cent in the delinquent 

 land list shows the effectiveness of the present 

 law. The law cannot be effective without buy- 

 ers for tax titles, and the fact that it is effec- 

 tive and that there are buyers for tax titles 

 has given rise to an agitation which has 

 brought forth the Maxey bill, which proposes 

 to withdraw from the market state tax lands 

 and tax homestead lands." 



MR. SCHMIDT. "The statement that the 

 percentage of lands delinquent for taxes has 

 decreased from 40 per cent to 5 per cent is ob- 

 viously not true, since the report of the audi- 

 tor-general shows that the area, in acres, of 

 land delinquent for taxes in 1890 (or three 

 years before the present tax laws went into 

 effect), was 7,697,000, and in 1905 the area is 

 given as .".K!2,000 acres. Why there are buy- 

 n -, of tax titles is evident from the following 

 example: The north half of the southeast 



quarter of section 36, town 16-14 west, was 

 sold for the taxes of 1889 to 1897, inclusive, 

 JMT.MO, tn Lewis Retterstoff, who in turn sold 

 it to the Alaska Refrigerator Company, by 

 whom it was lumbered and who cut 150,000 

 feet of green pine worth $1,500.00 on the 

 stump. It is these gifts that make speculators 

 eager to buy delinquent tax lands. Will any 

 one have the effrontery to maintain that the 

 state made a gain in this and thousands of sim- 

 ilar instances? Would it not have brought 

 fifty times the revenue if the state had sold the 

 lumber itself?" 



Townships Cannot Lose. 



RECORD. "In considering this bill which 

 supposes the state to have an absolute title to 

 these lands, it is only fair to ask where did 

 this title come from? When one is investigat- 

 ing this matter it is discovered that certain 

 taxes were levied by the state, county, town- 

 ships and school districts on these lands, which 

 taxes were not paid. Under the tax law a lien 

 existed for the payment of these taxes. The 

 tax law makes the state, acting by the auditor- 

 general, a trustee for the foreclosure of these 

 taxes. Upon the foreclosure and sale it is the 

 duty of the auditor-general to send the county 

 treasurer where the lands lie the taxes as- 

 sessed by the county townships and school 

 districts. Under the law all revenues obtained 

 from these lands are distributed pro rata 

 among the different municipalities according 

 to the amount of taxes levied for their several 

 benefits. After these lands have been delin- 

 quent for not less than five years they may be, 

 and most of them have been, deeded to the 

 state turned over to the land commissioner's 

 office and termed state tax homestead lands. 

 The trusteeship of the state is still recognized, 

 and the funds produced by their sale are still 

 distributed proportionately among the differ- 

 ent localities having had taxes levied upon the 

 land for which these lands are delinquent." 



MR. SCHMIDT. "The present law pro- 

 vides, under section 127 of the General Tax 

 Law of 1893, as amended, that, 'Whenever it 

 shall appear by the record in the auditor-gen- 

 eral's office that any lands are delinquent for 

 taxes for five or more years, and said lands 

 have been bid off to the state, one or more 

 times, by reason of such delinquent taxes, * * * 

 the title to the state shall be deemed absolute 

 in and to said lands.' 



"Therefore the state has a title to the lands 

 that come under this description, i. e.. that 

 have been delinquent for taxes for a period of 

 five or more years, and the title being abso- 

 lute, it can do with them what it will. As a 

 further sample of the ignorance or malicious- 

 ness of the author of this article, it should 

 here be stated that the laws proposed by the 

 Commission of Inquiry (see Sec. 8, page 136, 

 of their report) provide that townships shall 

 receive from the state, in lieu of taxes, an an- 

 nual sum of ten cents per acre, which shall be 

 used for fire protection and the building of 

 roads, bridges, etc., and for local purposes. 



"While the present system levies taxes on 

 timber lands, beyond collecting them, or at- 

 tempting to collect them, it does nothing, and 

 in thus taking the money of the owners with- 

 out giving something in return, it is really 

 committing an act of confiscation. The pro- 

 posed laws intend that the taxes which are 

 levied shall be used to protect the lands, as 

 well as being a source of revenue for the gen- 

 eral state government." 



RECORD. "The bill is entitled a bill to 

 temporarily suspend from sale all delinquent 

 state tax and tax homestead lands. The in- 

 quiry naturally arises what does temporarily 

 mean. No period is mentioned in which they 

 shall be restored to sale. The intention of the 

 bill is to draw these lands permanently from 

 market. If passed, like all other acts of the 

 legislature, it will be permanent until repealed 

 or amended. It provides that all lands which 

 have been delinquent for five or more years 

 shall not be sold, only that the original owner 



may pay the tax if he desires. Under this A- 

 vision lands would be assessed by the super- 

 Lands advertised for sale in May must ft 

 withdrawn from the market." 



MR. SCHMIDT. "The bill was introduced 

 at the instigation of the Commission of Inl 

 quiry, and is part of a carefully thought out 

 plan to improve conditions in the State Land 

 Department. If the editor of Senator Foster'! 

 paper had taken the trouble to read over the re^ 

 port of the commission and the laws proposed by 

 it. he would not have made the many errors 1m 

 has in discussing the bill, unless they are in- 

 tentionally misrepresented and meant to dis- 

 tort the truth. In the report it would have 

 found that the bill only intended to withdraw 

 the lands until the legislature could take cog- 

 nizance of the existing conditions, and enact 

 into law the bills proposed for remedying 

 them." 



Drastic Action Was Necessary. 



RECORD. "The bill practically n 

 and renders nugatory a large part of the tax 

 law, without reference to the act." 



MR. SCHMIDT. "The request of the leg- 

 islature to the land commissioner and th' 

 itor-general not being heeded, it was necessary 

 to pass a law nullifying temporarily th. 

 visions of the present law, which are a detri 

 ment to the state and a menace in their prcs 

 ent form, and are not producing the effects 

 intended." 



Senators Are Careless. 



RECORD. "This bill is conspicuous botli 

 because of what it enacts and what it fails tc 

 enact. Granting for the sake of argument thai 

 the present law dealing with these delinquent 

 tax lands is not entirely satisfactory in opera- 

 tion, should the legislature make a confessior 

 of incompetency by passing a bill which pro- 

 vides no remedy for existing ills, bu; says in 

 effect that those provisions of the present law 

 through the operation of which the lands were 

 acquired, shall be nullified; that there shall 

 be no effective effort made to collect public 

 revenues from lands whose owners have nol 

 paid their taxes for a few years, and that th( 

 people of the counties, townships and schoo 

 districts, whose interests in the lands an 

 about 85 per cent against 15 per cent in th' 

 state, shall sit back and wait until this or sonr 

 future legislature shall show enough coi 

 live ability to provide some legislation i 

 a merely destructive kind? 



"In view of what is above said, where is th 

 wisdom in interfering with the steps whic' 

 under the present law the auditor-general i 

 required to take to enforce the collection of al 

 delinquent taxes? These lands having 

 into the nominal ownership of the state. 

 the legislature should deal with the lands, no 

 as with lands in which the whole title is in th 

 state, but as trust lands. We doubt if thes 

 would-be exploiters of state tax lands realiz 

 that under the law the state never acquire 

 anything but a title in trust. Such is the till 

 acquired upon foreclosure of the tax liens 1> 

 the auditor-general, and the law so declares 

 and the subsequent transfer to the state J 

 merely an administrative transfer by whicl 

 the lands are turned over from one departmen 

 to another, with the trust still attaching. Anc 

 as a conclusion, would it not be better for til 

 legislature to wait until it decides upon an ac 

 live policy to pursue in relation to these 

 rather than to decree a 'do nothing' course: 



MR. SCHMITJT : "This view might .i 

 justified in some one not familiar with all 

 the facts, but to a member of the senate it 

 equivalent to a confession of neglect of dut 

 in that a report and recommendations h 

 been prepared by a Commission empo^M 

 by the legislature to make an investi- 

 and after this report is completed and I 

 tributed, certain members do not even tJ 

 the trouble to read it; their time being tall 

 up in protecting their own selfish interel 



