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How Oklahoma Property Taxes Are Calculated and Who/What Really Owns Your Property

The most important hour and half you will ever spend is the hour and a half I spent talking to former McClain County Auditor turned Oklahoma Senator, Kendal Sacchieri, about how property taxes are calculated and who really owns your property. You really should take the time to watch the whole live episode of the ROPE Report from yesterday, January 15th (2025). You can find it here on YouTube and on Rumble.

As a citizen of Oklahoma, I absolutely DESPISE the fact that if I don’t pay my property taxes, the county will take my home away from me, sell it and pay whatever taxes I owe. Seriously. I may have a title to my house, but it won’t matter one whit if I don’t make good on my tax bill every year.

Below is the breakdown on the property taxes for a home in northwest Oklahoma City, done by the Oklahoma County Assessor. The property tax bill below that is from the McClain County Assessor’s office. Kendal told me that if your property tax bill doesn’t look like the blue one, you should ask your county Treasurer to break down the county property taxes into mills so that homeowners can better see the distribution of their tax dollars..

Note which entity is FAR AND AWAY the largest tax? Now let me ask two questions; 1. Do you feel your property taxes are too high? and 2. Have you voted on YES on a school bond?

Keep these things in mind when you watch the video below.

Now, watch this video clip. Trust me when I say it will be THE MOST IMPORTANT 7 MINUTE VIDEO OF YOUR LIFE AS AN OKLAHOMA HOME OWNER.

If you’re not throwing things at your video screen and freaking out a bit after watching those clips, we can’t be friends.

Basically, what Senator Sacchieri said was, that you don’t own your own property because of a scam that allows public schools to get more and more and more money every year NO MATTER THEIR OUTCOMES. Can’t teach kids how to read? Get more money. Can’t teach kids how to write a paragraph that makes sense? Get more money? Can’t teach kids to count back change or figure the percentage of something? Get more money. THAT IS NUTS.

Unfortunately, we, as citizens simply haven’t understood the process of property taxation well enough to stop it in the past, evidently. Fortunately, we have the Senator to TEACH us the process. Now, that she’s educated us, we need to do several things.

  1. We need to just drive our legislators crazy asking for a bill to put a state question on a general election ballot to remove the language from the state Constitution that allows counties to collect property taxes. The state has nothing to do with property taxes. Property taxes in Oklahoma are generated at the COUNTY level and go to the COUNTY entities you see in my example above. Once the language is removed, the county has no ability to FORCE property taxes.
  2. Toward the end of the full video, Kendal and I talk about the County Excise Boards. This is an important thing for you to know about. The Excise Board is a group of people who meet after the County Assessor has turned in home valuations and the county entities have decided how much in taxes they must recoup to make their budgets. The decide whether or not the budgets proposed by the entities are sound and reasonable and how much the entity will be allowed to tax your property. They must hold public hearings on the budgets submitted, allowing citizen comment. You can find your Excise Board meetings through your county office. Here is the list of Boards and Commissions for Oklahoma County. In Kingfisher, after a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a football coach for ‘hazing’ (physical abuse), the school added the lawsuit burden to their budget, expecting the taxpayers to foot the bill. The Kingfisher Excise Board members rejected the budget, forcing Kingfisher to cut their budget to pay the lawsuit. This was HUGE. This kind of thing almost never happens, but then I would imagine there are few – if any citizens – that would go to a meeting to protest a budget that would increase their property taxes. Learn about your Excise Board.
  3. Your School Board is VERY IMPORTANT. Go to these meetings. If your school proposes a school bond – PROTEST. They MUST have open meetings and they MUST allow citizen comments. If they won’t, band together and send out literature to the district warning residents of what a vote on the bond can do to their property tax rates. As my neighbors and I found out, it was much cheaper to band together to stop a school bond by creating a flier and splitting postage and copying costs and sending it out to district voters, than it was to have our property rates jacked up.

BOTTOM LINE: Citizens have the ability to stop property tax increases through the means above. We also have the ability to have our lawmakers act on our behalf by proposing legislation for a state question to remove the ability for counties to collect property tax. If we do neither, we simply can’t complain.

PASS THIS INFORMATION ON TO FRIENDS, FAMILY and NEIGHBORS!

Everyone needs to know this information!

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OK Rep Jay Steagall; Your Home And Your Income Are Constitutionally Protected Property

Michael and I were happy to have Oklahoma Rep. Jay Steagall join us for our podcast on December 11th to talk about property taxes – and also his bill to repeal the state income tax.

The conversation was nearly two hours so thanks to Rep. Steagall for sticking it out with us! Also, thanks to all the people who tuned in to participate in the discussion – at one point, we had SO MANY COMMENTS I couldn’t get them all on! Certainly, it was gratifying to see so many people interested in the issue of taxation in a ‘red state’! We hope you learned a lot from the discussion!

Please watch the full video on our YouTube and Rumble channels to get the full effect of the discussion and read Jay’s income tax bill, which can be found here. The Oklahoma State House press release about the bill, “Steagall Files Bill to Eliminate Income Tax by 2035” covers a good chunk of information about it, so check that out as well.

In the clip below, Jay talks about the fact that property taxes are a concept enshrined in the Oklahoma State Constitution – something that requires a different level of action from authoring and passing legislation.

So, Oklahomans are going to have to lobby their legislators to write a bill that would remove the ability for a state entity to collect property taxes, then, we’ll have to vote on it as a state question on a general election ballot. Frankly, that seems much easier to me than to collect signatures for an initiative petition to put a state question on the ballot. As Jay says, our income and our real property, are ours, so I would think legislators would jump at the chance to make sure the Constitutional Rights of their citizens were protected – right?

Jay talks a bit about his income tax bill below. Obviously, Oklahomans should support Jay’s efforts to remove the shackles from the ‘results of our industry’, so please make sure to follow developments regarding the bill – and we will too.

My husband and I kept my mother’s home after she passed. Above is a photo of the apportionment for that home in Oklahoma City. Please note that the largest percentage of monies paid via the taxes on this home is for Oklahoma City Public Schools.

Part of the reason I’m so rabidly against property taxes – outside of the largest, most unfair issue, which is that I’ll never actually own this home if I have to pay ‘rent’ to the government every year to consider it my personal property – is the fact that OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOLS COMPRISE 53% of the entire state budget but yet the county ALSO taxes me for the school district in which the home resides. HOW MUCH MONEY DO SCHOOLS NEED?

Then consider this; at least three districts in Oklahoma – Kingfisher, Ninekaw and Wewoka – have been subjected to HUGE financial settlements resulting from situations in which school officials have been found guilty of essentially terrorizing students. Add to this the fact that Oklahoma public education has fallen to 49th in the nation. WHY ARE WE ENCUMBERING PROPERTY FOR THIS? REALLY? It’s horrifying.’

Interestingly, Kingfisher county Excise Board refused to encumber the property of Kingfisher Public School district residents to meet their financial obligation to the family of the boy who sued the head football coach for bullying. Instead, Kingfisher just let go 18 members of staff EXCEPT FOR THE COACH WHO WAS FOUND GUILTY OF BULLYING FOOTBALL PLAYERS.

Good for the Kingfisher County Excise Board! At least they put the oneness back on the school! But then, the school let go 18 positions and then kept the one that caused the other 18 to be let go.

Again…WHAT? Taxpayers are supposed to be able to lose their homes because public schools suck?

Truly, this is an issue of which ROPE won’t let go! Keep following! We’ll keep reporting on this nonsense in the REDDEST state…(insert eye-roll here).

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Ageism Dominates Comments On OKC FOX Reporter Payton May’s Post From August State School Board Meeting

I swear, I shouldn’t be surprised by absolutely ANYTHING today, but this one got me.

This was a Tweet from reporter Payton May during Thursday’s (8.22.24) state school board meeting.

I can’t see the comments on the post anymore. I’ve apparently been blocked for repeatedly commenting, but if you go through them, you’ll see a pattern – older people need to sit down and shut up about what’s going on in schools.

Here are the specific comments to which I actively replied:

My predictive text decided to use “funded” for “fined” and I hit sent before I saw that…

This guy actually responded that, yes, he was an ageist, but he hadn’t said anything about drag queens or kindergartners. SMH, RME…

I believe I’ve made my point (and not always nicely, but my dander was up) but I have to say – not that Twitter is an indicative replica of all Americans – we’re in trouble.

The people who commented about the age of the people there for Walters were ugly about it. I mean, why even say something like that? They obviously have absolutely no idea how property taxes work (you don’t own your property because the state forces you to pay taxes on your property that fund local public schools, libraries and technical schools and if you don’t pay them, the state comes in and takes your property from you to pay the bill for those things) and that people on fixed incomes (many collect only Social Security having been propagandized to believe that would take care of them in their old age) are more susceptible to having their property confiscated for lack of funds to pay their property taxes.

More than likely, these people live in apartments and take money from the government for different things on a regular basis, so they could care less what happens to people who don’t pay their property taxes, but I think there’s a bigger issue here.

Democrats/leftists, want abortion on demand – they always have. I can’t make a case for it because it’s never made any sense to me why anyone would want to kill a pre-born infant – not even when I was a young moron who thought she was an atheist. You either don’t have sex, or you use birth control if you’re gonna have sex – you don’t kill babies because YOU were too much of an idiot to protect yourself from getting pregnant.

Soon, it will be old people.

I could wax on about why and how and all of that, but it’s been reported for many years – especially since COVID and so many old people were simply put on ventilators and left to die. The important part of even putting this into a blog for public consumption is to understand that AGEISM – like so many other horribly destructive social trends – is here in Oklahoma.

We must push back against the Democrat death cult. We do it with abortion, but we’ve ignored the looming specter of ageism.

When you hear or see this kind of conversation on social media, or anywhere else, remind people how school funding and property ownership works. Remind them that old people have more skin in the game than the young. Remind them that older folks should be cared for and how much we still have to learn from those who are older.

Don’t let the young demonize the old, because if we do, we’ll end up with the same problem we have with the pre-born now – we’ll be having to figure out how to stop euthanasia programs like those invented by the Nazis to get rid of the medically infirm. It’s happened before, it’s happening in other countries now, it can happen here too.

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We Are Quickly Moving Away from A Rights-Based Society to a Value-Based Society

Jenni White, 4.12.24

After our interview with Julianne Romanello Wednesday morning, I felt it would be helpful to add a few links to allow people to further explore the premise of Rights-Based vs Value-Based governance.

At the outset of the podcast, we talked about property taxes and how, once the government taxes our property, we don’t own it anymore. This was arguably one of Jefferson’s biggest issue, which he delineated in the Declaration of Independence by the word ‘happiness’ in the phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Why equate property with happiness?

One of the reasons the pilgrims left England for lands undiscovered, was the very difficult ability to hold property in a monarchical system. If property rights had not been previously prescribed and legally noted, the King was often considered the owner of all empty lands because he was King by right of God and God provided him the land. This land could be (and was) given to various title-holding individuals depending upon the monarch at the time, usually consisting of Lords, Bishops, Barons, etc., while all non-title-holders were forced to rent land from the King (or the closest title-holder). In fact, even if you were found hunting on the King’s land, you could be fined or otherwise punished. It mattered not if your children were starving and you were unable to find food, all the game on the King’s property was the King’s, end of discussion.

If the King created another Baron in the place of the previous, a renter could be thrown off the property so it could be bequeathed to a new ‘owner’. Obviously, this kind of instability for the vast majority of the English population did NOT create happiness. Thus, one of the rights among men that the Founders desired to enshrine in the Constitution, was the right to own property for oneself; not merely rent it from the Crown, OR ANOTHER GOVERNMENTAL FORM. This stability then, could create happiness of the kind that provided safety and security as the phrase, “A man’s home is his castle” was meant to convey.

Today, however, Oklahomans – like so many other citizens of so many other states – no longer own their own property, but rent it from the King (state), placing us right back where we were when we started.

Why would I say such a thing? Because, as McClain County Assessor Kendal Sacchieri told us – property taxes MUST be paid, or we’ll be thrown off ‘our’ property so that ‘our’ property can be sold to the highest bidder and the taxes paid to the King (state).

What creates property taxes? Look at the illustration below prepared by Larry Stein, Oklahoma County Assessor. It can be found here, with more explanation for the expenditure of County property tax dollars.

You’re property is not your own because nearly 60% of it goes to government schools – government schools who also receive appropriations from the legislature, monies from parimutuel betting, the lottery AND MORE! As I’ve asked perpetually since 2010 – HOW MUCH MONEY IS ENOUGH FOR SCHOOLS TO HAVE – especially when their results are dismal and rare few pupils educated in public schools can read or do math! Here are a few of the other ways public schools get money from an 1889 Institute paper on School Finance.

Please, someone explain to me why our PROPERTY is being attached for government education that already is funded via the appropriation mechanism?

Career Tech and College Tech Centers are also appropriated funds by the legislature. Here are their budget requests for 2020.

PLEASE, someone explain to me why our PROPERTY is being attached for MORE government education that is funded via the appropriation mechanism?

County government gets the next piece. To me, this is actually legitimate government expense. The County provides road repair and many other SERVICES from which taxpayers benefit. This, could be paid directly to the County as a tax – much like the taxes paid to the state – instead of attaching our property.

Cities and towns should be funded via their own taxes – like those on delivered merchandize (Amazon, etc.) and sales taxes collected within their boundaries (which they already get!) – your property SHOULD NOT BE TAXED TO RUN CITIES AND TOWNS.

The City/County Library should be funded via voluntary donations. Period. Yes, it is important to have repositories of knowledge, but large corporations are welcome to donate these facilities – as are citizens. Our PROPERTY SHOULD NOT BE TAXED to provide disgusting books to minors – which they do.

The City/County Health Department is another item that should be funded privately. There are many indigent clinics run by non-profits. Healthcare is NOT a function of government, it is a function of private economy whether you like that idea or not. The main function of government in America is THE PROTECTION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. Healthcare is not an individual right and has never been throughout history until the last several generations. Additionally, we all know that government-sponsored healthcare systems became armies of tyranny during COVID. I don’t want my tax dollars used to support tyranny in any form and I certainly don’t want my property seized to pay taxes to a group of people who want to force me to bow to healthcare mandates we’ve since learned DID NOTHING or killed us.

TIFs are a type of property tax that indebt property owners for economic development. You can read more on that here. There is no way property owners should allow ANY form of ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT to attach their property. Back in the ‘old days’ developers shouldered the risk of their developments – but they also owned all the rewards. Today, the PUBLIC is made to shoulder the risk of PRIVATE development, yet our property is taxed without us getting any REWARD at all. In many cases, the TIFF is for an office building or industrial park. Not only do the taxed property owners not reap any reward from this development, but they don’t even get to USE the property they are financing. Most TIFFs are sold to the public as – here, we’ll develop this area to bring in businesses from which you can possibly get a job. WHAT? Not only is there NO REWARD for the taxation of our property, but we might not even be able to become employed by the businesses being brought in through the development? Who in their right mind would give someone on the street the use of their car for the PROMISE that they’ll put gas in it when (if) they bring it back, yet people in cities and towns across Oklahoma actually fall for this scheme and accept the taxation of their property through a TIFF consistently. WAKE UP! STOP IT!

And so, to wrap up my most extensive piece ever on property taxes, please read this twice or three times. Once you understand the argument – because I believe you will – share it with friends AND your legislators. Property taxes are INHERENTLY wrong and must be stopped if Americans (Oklahomans) are to have true freedom.

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