Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, I think the General Assembly realized that these long periods between reevaluations or reappraisals can create problems, like the one we mentioned, especially when property values are rising, and people may see over 8 years, gosh, their property value goes up 100 percent. And then they worry about, gee, are my taxes going to go up. So what the General Assembly did is actually pass a new law - now, it only applies to counties with populations of 75,000 or more, but that's most counties. It essentially says that if the market value of properties in a county gets out of whack - I'll use that technical term, out of whack - with the appraised values by more than 15 percent, either 15 percent on the high end or 15 percent on the low end, then this law comes into effect, and it says that the county has to do a reappraisal of property within 3 years regardless of where the county may have been on its typical reappraisal schedule. So what this means is it's not going to allow property values - or market values, what you're property's really worth - to get too far out of line with what the appraised value says. And I think this is actually a good law. Now, counties can still adjust the property tax rate downward if they see property values go up to minimize the impact on property taxes. But, again, I think it's a good law because it does keep those two values, the appraised value and the market value, more in line and prevents them from spreading out and becoming very, very different."