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Comments from sender: I'm forwarding this because of the paragraphs at the end of the story, about Rove's voter registration.
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Rove assessed $3,400 in back taxes
Full story: http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=rove04&date=20050904

By Lori Montgomery
The Washington Post

																											 												

WASHINGTON -- Presidential adviser Karl Rove may live in Washington. But in his heart -- and for voting purposes -- he remains a Texan. Which means he is not legally entitled to the homestead-deduction and property-tax cap he's been getting on his Washington home for the past 3 ½ years.

Last week, the District of Columbia tax collector was alerted to the situation, and Rove agreed to reimburse the District for an estimated $3,400 in back taxes, city officials said. But some Texas officials also are wondering about the place Rove calls home.

In a letter released Friday by the White House, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR) accepted blame for the error, which also has affected numerous members of Congress. The homestead exemption gives D.C. taxpayers a substantial tax break on their primary residences. But starting in 2002, a change in the law made it available only to Washington property owners who do not vote elsewhere, city officials said. That made Rove, and many others, ineligible.

"OTR failed to rescind the benefit when the law changed. As a result of OTR's error, the property inadvertently received tax deductions for which you no longer qualified," chief assessor Thomas Branham wrote Rove. "We regret any inconvenience that this error on the part of OTR may have caused you."

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Rove never intended to make an improper claim to the deduction.

"When Mr. Rove purchased the home in January 2001, he qualified for the exemption. He was not made aware of the changes in D.C. law," Healy said. "Now that it has been brought to his attention, he is making restitution."

Healy said Rove will forgo the exemption and tax cap on his Washington house -- valued at more than $1.1 million -- rather than give up his status as a Texas voter. But that raises a new set of questions.

Rove sold his longtime home in Austin in 2003. He was getting a homestead exemption there, too. So for three years, from 2001 until the sale, Rove was claiming homesteads in Texas and Washington, which is, technically, illegal, according to tax collectors in both places. "Strictly speaking, you can only have one homestead," said Art Cory, chief tax appraiser in Travis County, Texas.

Cory said he would, nonetheless, probably not bother to investigate.

Anyway, Rove is now registered to vote in Kerr County, about 80 miles west of Austin in the Texas Hill Country. He and his wife, Darby, have owned property there, on the Guadalupe River, since at least 1997, according to county property records.

But as far as the locals know, the Roves have never lived in either of two tiny rental cottages Rove claims as his residence on Texas voter registration rolls. The larger is 814 square feet and valued by the county at about $25,000.

"I've been here 10 years and I've never seen him. There are only, like, three grocery stores in town. You'd think you'd at least see him at the HEB" grocery, said Greg Shrader, editor and publisher of the Kerrville Daily Times.

Charles Ratliff, secretary of the Kerr County Democratic Party, said he's never even heard rumors of Rove's presence. "I have no memory of anybody saying to me, 'Hey, Karl Rove is in town, and he's speaking at the courthouse.' Or, 'Karl Rove is in town and I saw him at the grocery store.'

"Now, you do hear people say that all the time about Kinky Friedman," Ratliff said, referring to the novelist, former lead singer for the 1970s country band The Texas Jewboys, and independent candidate for governor. "If somebody famous like Rove lived near Kerrville, I think I would hear about it all the time."

In Texas, when you register to vote where you don't actually live, the county prosecutor can come after you for voter fraud, said Elizabeth Reyes, an attorney with the elections division of the Texas Secretary of State's Office. Rove's rental cottage "doesn't sound like a residence to me because it's not a fixed place of habitation," she said.

Still, under state law, the definition of a Texan is pretty loose, Reyes said, even for voting purposes. So someone would have to file a complaint.

In the end, she said, "Questions of residency are ultimately for the court to decide."

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