PORT GIBSON — A $435 million civil rights lawsuit demanding that Claiborne County be allowed to compute Grand Gulf Nuclear Station’s annual property tax bill received support Tuesday from a former Claiborne official who spent time in federal prison for stealing from residents paying their taxes.

“I’m not a plaintiff, but I’m supporting them 250 percent,” said Evan Doss Jr., who personally served notice of the suit to Claiborne County supervisors, who are among multiple defendants. His wife, Emma R. Ross, is among multiple plaintiffs. No attorney is identified on the lawsuit.

Doss was sentenced to four years and three months in jail in 1997 after being convicted of embezzling and laundering county funds while he was serving as Claiborne County’s tax assessor and collector.

Doss’ comments promoting the Grand Gulf suit, filed last week in Claiborne County Circuit Court, consumed the majority of a 30-minute news conference Tuesday that had been advertised as a forum for plaintiffs to explain their argument that Mississippi’s mode of taxing the state’s only nuclear power plant amounts to racial discrimination.

In addition to supervisors, defendants are the State Tax Commission and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood.  The commission received notice of the suit on Monday, according to spokesman Kathy Waterbury, and so did Hood’s office, public information officer Jan Schaefer said.  None of the supervisors would comment.

The suit lists 15 Claiborne County residents seeking damages from the defendants for enforcing the state law that treats nuclear plants differently for property tax purposes.

Rather than having its value assessed and property taxes collected by officials in Claiborne, its home county, Grand Gulf pays levies directly to the commission. That state agency then sends nearly $8 million of the taxes Grand Gulf pays back to Claiborne and apportions the remainder among 44 other counties and all cities that the state’s only nuclear generating station serves.

By law, the commission must tax the utility at 2 percent of its assessed value, or $20 million, whichever is greater.

Grand Gulf, owned by System Energy Resources, opened in 1985 after an 11-year construction period and at a cost of more than $3 billion. Under existing state-set property tax assessment rates for utilities, its $16 million tax bill eclipsed any other tax bill in the state. At the time, Claiborne County, which got all the money, was operating on an $800,000 county budget to serve its 12,500 residents.

After a few years, the Mississippi Legislature divided the tax under the plan now in effect, a move that was litigated and approved by the state Supreme Court.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs note that Claiborne County is about 80 percent black and argue that the legislature’s alteration of the way that Grand Gulf pays taxes was motivated by a desire to keep Claiborne’s majority-black county board from setting taxes for the plant. 

“We are the only county in Mississippi that has such an entity that produces revenue and can’t be taxed,” said Mildred Holland, the lone plaintiff to appear at the news conference where Doss spoke.  “This does not happen in any other county in the state of Mississippi.  I don’t know if it happens anywhere else in the United States.”

Tax Commission records show that Claiborne received $7,847,184.95 in fiscal 2008 from the taxes paid by Grand Gulf.

Of that total, $2.65 million went to the Claiborne County School District and about $480,000 to Port Gibson’s city government, according to county administrator James Johnston.

That left nearly $4 million to be budgeted at the board’s discretion for local services such as police and fire protection, or about half of the county’s general fund.

Doss said Tuesday that Claiborne taxpayers have been forced to shoulder “outrageous” increases in millage rates due to under-taxation of Grand Gulf.

Records compiled by the Tax Commission differ, however, showing that Claiborne County’s millage rate, 91.17, is well below the state average of 102.56.

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Contact Ben Bryant at bbryant@vicksburgpost.com