New law bans mandatory city property registries

Tulsa, Oklahoma City and a handful of other Oklahoma cities will be forced to dismantle their property registration programs under a new state law approved during the last session.

House Bill 2620, known as the Protect Property Rights Act, will prohibit municipalities from implementing mandatory property registration programs.

Tulsa already requires nuisance property owners to register with the city and had been considering a rental unit registration program in the wake of a January 2013 quadruple homicide at a south Tulsa apartment complex.

“That law took Tulsa a step backwards,” said Dwain Midget, Director of Community Development.

Unlike other city programs, the city of Tulsa’s registration program targeted only neglected properties that had been subject to code enforcement action.

Nuisance property owners were required to register with the city and develop a plan to either rehab or remove the structure, Midget said.

“That bill is a setback for what we have already accomplished in Tulsa in terms of addressing vacant, abandoned and neglected buildings that had become a nuisance and burden to taxpayers,” Midget said.

City officials had been considering a rental registration program to encourage greater safety for residents, but that effort was put on hold earlier this year when HB 2620 was introduced.

Bill author Rep. Steve Martin, R-Bartlesville, said he drafted the bill in part after noticing others were looking to copy his hometown’s program.

“That program was an inspiration to other programs around the state,” Martin said. “The problem is cities were registering programs for different reasons, using them, I felt, as a profit center.”

Martin said the Bartlesville program provided a way for residents to complain to city officials about problem properties.

“I didn’t think (it) was right because if I have a problem with my bank, I can’t call the city,” Martin said. “If I have a problem with my insurance agent, I can’t call the city.

“I didn’t see why a person needed to be able to call the city with real estate complaints.”

Bartlesville officials called the program, which applied only to rental property owners, a “lifesaver” because it provided information on who to contact when problems arise with a property.

In the past, the city was limited to relying on publicly available ownership information that might be vague or outdated.

Bartlesville officials did not respond to a request for comment about the new law.

But one Bartlesville rental property owner said he was glad to see the bill become law.

Jay Mitchell, who has opposed the registry since its inception, said the program amounted to an unfair tax on property owners.

Forced property registration programs too easily lend themselves to abuse by government officials, he said.

Mitchell said existing state law supplies cities with all the tools they need to abate problem properties. Mitchell said he favors a voluntary registry and has long supplied Bartlesville officials with his contact information.

Meanwhile, Martin called Oklahoma City’s recently approved property registration program the “most egregious” example of property rights incursion.

Martin said he believes the Oklahoma City registry unfairly burdened property owners.

“You can have a perfectly well-maintained vacant property and you would still have to pay this outlandish registration fee and have criminal fees assessed if you failed to,” Martin said.

“Those of us who look out for the property rights of citizens felt that it was in the best interest of people of Oklahoma if cities were not allowed to continue with these property registration schemes,” Martin said.

The Oklahoma City program, approved last year but hadn’t yet launched, would have required owners of vacant buildings to register them with the city at an initial cost of $285 with a $190 annual renewal fee thereafter.

A vacant Oklahoma City building had to be registered if it had been declared unsecured or dilapidated, had no electric or water service for at least 60 days, or was the subject of a foreclosure action.

An Oklahoma City spokeswoman said the city was “very disappointed” with the passage of the bill.

“We had planned on launching a registry program this year to address the thousands of buildings that are decreasing the home values in neighborhoods,” city spokeswoman Kristy Yager said.

Oklahoma City officials are currently analyzing the bill to see what options the city has left.

“We currently have 11 positions that we are adding to the 2014-15 budget to deal with abandoned buildings,” Yager said. “That’s going to stay in the budget until we can determine we absolutely won’t need these positions.

“We know we need to address abandoned buildings, we have to deal with those,” Yager said.

While Oklahoma City officials look to see if they can salvage anything in their registration ordinance, Midget said the city of Tulsa has not abandoned the concept of a rental registry of some type, despite the new law.

“We’ve got to figure something out,” Midget said.

Mayor Dewey Bartlett initially said he favored a licensing program for apartments as a way to encourage them to make them safer for renters.

Bartlett took the pro-licensing stance following a quadruple homicide in January 2013 at a south Tulsa apartment complex owned by a California company.

But city officials scrapped that idea in April 2013 in favor of a less-restrictive registration process that would be applied to both multi- and single-family property rental owners. Area Realtors opposed a mandatory registry.

The new law takes effect Nov. 1.