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Changes in Green Acres program will be benefit to local landowners
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By Charlie Warner
Argus News Editor
“We’ve come a long ways back to where we were before all the changes were made last year. This is definitely going to make it better,” said Houston County Assessor Tom Dybing. Dybing was referring to the Green Acres property tax legislation that was passed last week by both the state House and state Senate.
The Minnesota Legislature made a quick about-face last week, after receiving copious amounts of criticism for the changes made to Green Acres last session. The 2008 Legislature created a new class of property in which an ownership change could mean paying seven years of back taxes.
Landowners, many who had their land in the Green Acres program for many years, charged that they would need to cut down trees and plow up wildlife habitat in order to pay all the back taxes.
The Green Acres program was created to foster farmland preservation. With urban sprawl reaching out from cities into the countryside, farmers (especially in the Metro Area) were facing rising taxes, due to nearby development. This forced many to sell family farms. The Green Acres program was a way in which county assessors could tax an enrolled farmer at a rate that farmland would bring as opposed to what nearby land was bringing when sold to developers.
About a decade ago farmers in Southeastern Minnesota started seeing their taxes increase as outside influences, such as people seeking recreational land, begin to pay much higher prices for “non-productive” (timber) land. Representatives from this area were advised by the Department of Revenue that farmland parcels containing wooded acres could be enrolled in Green Acres to help farmers stay on the land by lowering the taxable value of farmland, both productive (row crop and pasture) and non-productive (wooded). In other words, the taxable value of farmland would more closely resemble its value to a farmer rather than its value to a developer or “weekend getaway” seeker.
Legislation passed last year changed all that. The State Legislature passed new guidelines which prohibited further enrollment of “non-productive” land and penalized landowners who sought to pull those acres out of the program. Legislators explained the changes as being in response to “tax abuses” and the need to apply the program in a uniform manner.
The most objectionable part of the 2008 legislation was the mandate that anyone who sold land that had been enrolled in the Green Acres program would have to payback all of the tax benefits from the past seven years. The payback was figured on an average of deferred taxes from the current year and two previous years times seven. This resulted in more money being paid back than what was saved during the seven years.
It was a bad law, and there were many persons from the out-state area who lobbied loud and hard to get the 2008 changes off the books, according to Dybing.
Along with fixing the problems created last year, the 2009 legislation may actually improve the program.
• Land enrolled in federal or state land conservation programs will qualify for the reworked Green Acres program under certain conditions.
• Land given a tax deferment for assessment year 2008 under the old program that did not qualify in 2009 because of the recent changes to the law shall continue to be qualified until sold or the arrival of the 2013 assessment, whichever comes first.
• Non-conforming land may be withdrawn from the Green Acres program penalty-free until 2010.
• Land enrolled in a new land classification created by the reworked law, the rural preserve property tax program, is not subject to additional taxes.
• A property owner can sell a portion of the land in Green Acres and only have that portion removed from the program. In the past, if a portion of Green Acres land was sold, all of the land was removed from the program.
• Farmers with land in the Green Acres program can transfer land to their children and that land can remain in the program. That was not the case in the past.
To enroll, a conservation management program for the land must be written, among other qualifications.
Land withdrawn from the program will be subject to three years of taxes instead of seven years.
Under the legislation the commissioner of revenue will report back to the Legislature annually on the status of the Green Acres program.
Some of the information for this was previously published in an article written by Craig Moorhead for The Argus.
You can contact Charlie Warner at
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