South Gwinnett News

The city of Grayson filed a lawsuit last week against the Gwinnett County tax commissioner to try to require her to collect taxes on behalf of the city.

The city filed the lawsuit in Gwinnett County Superior Court and is seeking to require Tax Commissioner Tiffany Porter to collect taxes for the city of 5,000, even though they don’t allocate money for her services, according to The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Mayor Allison Wilkerson estimated that property taxes account for $505,535 of the city’s proposed $1.583 million budget.

Tiffany Porter | Instagram/Tiffany Porter

Wilkerson told the AJC that they were hoping to iron out Porter’s responsibilities so that her municipality could obtain a third of their budget through property taxes.

“We’re going to have our hands tied,” Wilkerson said. “It’s going to hurt if we have to go a different route this year. It might be tight. We were hoping we were going to be able to work it out. At some point, somebody’s got to stand up for what’s right. It’s a matter of principle for me.”

The lawsuit comes on the heels of the passage of Senate Bill 201, a measure which prevents the tax commissioners of Gwinnett and Fulton counties from charging cities a special tax collection fee to increase their salary, according to the AJC.

Porter, who was elected last November, announced her intentions earlier this year to charge eight Gwinnett cities $2 per parcel in additional fees to handle their property taxes, the AJC reported. The money would go toward her salary, which is currently $140,000 annually. The additional fees would increase her salary by more than $110,000.

The attempt by Porter, a Democrat, to charge additional fees led state lawmakers to pass the measure that would allow municipalities and counties to agree on tax collection deals without involving the tax commissioner, according to the AJC.

Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, who is representing Porter, has countered that Porter isn’t obligated to fulfill a contract to which she didn’t agree.

The existing agreement wouldn’t compensate the tax commissioner “for her work or her worth,” Sears wrote in a letter attached to the lawsuit.