Is your horse farm a "real farm?"

If the "Great Recession" has been hard on your equine business, you are not alone. Increased property taxes, land use and zoning disputes, and other land related issues have arisen with greater frequency and severe consequences for equestrian landowners. It has never been more important to understand your property rights.

At the 2010 Minnesota Horse Expo, I will present a daily seminar on property law and related issues of importance to equine landowners. These seminars are scheduled in the Ramberg Building at 3pm on Friday and Saturday and at 12pm on Sunday.

The Minnesota Horse Expo is a nonprofit organization solely owned by the Minnesota Horse Council to raise funds for the benefit of Minnesota's horse industry. The Expo is your best opportunity to connect with horse enthusiasts and explore the diversity of Minnesota's equine businesses. As staff attorney for the Expo I will be there every day, all day, and available by phone. I hope to see you at my favorite pan-equestrian event of the year!

2010 Minnesota Horse Expo

And now, we wait.

Last Wednesday, March 24 our horse boarding property tax bill received a hearing in the Minnesota House of Representatives. As in the Senate, I testified on behalf of the Minnesota Horse Council with its President, Mark Ward. Our chief author in the House is Rep. Bob Dettmer of Forest Lake, and we owe him our thanks for carrying this bill and inviting bipartisan support.

Our proposed legislation has no opposition and a growing number of co-authors from both sides of the aisle. This is in large part due to the hard work done in advance over several months of participation in the Minnesota Department of Revenue's study work-group in which the peculiar problems of property tax classification of equine property were thoroughly explored and discussed. Our bill resulted from this effort and MDOR has supported it --and us-- by reassuring legislators that the new language would clarify the standard for agricultural classification applicable to commercial horse boarding property. We are all reaching for statewide uniformity, and the new language would help accomplish that.

Our bill in both houses of the Legislature has been "laid aside" for possible inclusion in an omnibus tax bill. Because of the broad and noncontroversial support it enjoys, we are hopeful that our bill would be included in a technical or non-controversial tax bill that both parties could endorse and that the Governor would sign. There is little left we can do, except to call our State Senators and Representatives to thank them for paying attention to this important issue and to encourage their continued support for its passage into law.

For up-to-the-minute status reports on our bill's progress, you may subscribe to "Bill Tracker" at our Legislature's web site. Here are some easy links:

Bill Search and Status
Text of HF 3107
Text of SF 2685

Thanks to you, too for your interest and support!

SF 2685 - The Horse Boarding amendment

It's official - we have a horse boarding amendment bill! It is Senate File 2685. With language that original author Dan Ramberg and I worked out with John Hagen at Department of Revenue, this bill is approved by the Minnesota Horse Council, the Minnesota Stable Owners Association, and the Minnesota Department of Revenue. The bill would amend the list of agricultural products in the agricultural property classification law, Minn. Stat. 273.13 Subd. 23(i)(3) as follows:

(3) the commercial boarding of horses, which may include related horse training
4.2and riding instruction, if the boarding is done in conjunction with on property that is also
4.3used for raising pasture to graze horses or raising or cultivating other agricultural products
4.4as defined in clause (1);

This is language that was carefully worked out with Department of Revenue so that we could all be assured that statewide uniformity can be achieved. The Department has been very helpful to us by reassuring legislators that we are unifying caselaw and MDOR policy with statutes, nothing more. As a result of this cooperative effort, the Chair of the Senate Property Tax subcommittee, Sen. Rod Skoe (DFL), has agreed to co-author the bill with Sen. Ray Vandeveer (R). We also have Senators Olseen (DFL), Koch (R), and Fobbe (DFL). Five cheers for bipartisanship!

We have to keep an eye on this, though. Ironically, bipartisan, consensus legislation that everyone agrees is good policy can be vulnerable to change by other interests who hope to jump on the fast track with us. I am making it clear to legislators that this is very specific language that cannot be changed because it was worked out so carefully with Department of Revenue. And we don't want other controversial bills (ie, anything to do with Green Acres) attached to ours in the hope that they can piggyback, because any controversy could derail our bill. We have what Sen. Skoe calls "peace in the valley" legislation that should pass because it is non-controversial, sound policy. And that's how we want to keep it.

Please help by contacting your Senator to voice your support. You can find your legislators at the Legislature's "district finder" web page, which is pretty slick:
http://www.gis.leg.mn/mapserver/districts/

Thanks to you all for your interest and support, and stay tuned for additional information about our companion bill in the House of Representatives as well as other pending horse-related legislation. I recently started a "Constant Contact" email newsletter service to manage my Equine Policy Update subscribers. This should help everyone maintain privacy and let people subscribe or unsubscribe easily.