Assessor Threatens Tax Status of Churches That Provide Asylum

Ignoring warnings from state officials, Los Angeles County Assessor John J. Lynch said Thursday that he may strip churches of their tax-exempt status if they provide shelter to undocumented refugees.

Lynch said in a letter to the State Board of Equalization that he believes that the “non-religious” use of church property to house illegal aliens violates federal revenue and tax codes that relieve churches of property tax obligations.

Los Angeles religious leaders who are deeply involved in the sanctuary movement strongly decried Lynch’s position Thursday.

“Mr. Lynch is acting in a very un-American manner and his strategy is better suited to the state in Poland than to that in California,” said the Rev. Philip Zwerling, whose First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has provided sanctuary to Central American refugees since 1982. “In the United States, we value the separation of church and state and freedom of religion. I wish that Mr. Lynch would read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

8-Page Opinion

Lynch said his initial decision to invalidate the churches’ religious exemption is based on an eight-page legal opinion that he received last month from a staff lawyer of the State Board of Equalization.

On Thursday, however, Lynch received a memo from the equalization board’s executive secretary that urged him to disregard the staff recommendation because it did not reflect the position of the board.

“My inclination is to go with the more professional view here, though I haven’t come to any final conclusion,” Lynch said. He criticized board members for overruling the researched opinion of attorney James McManigal, the board’s staff tax counsel.

Normally, the board reviews its staff recommendations before they are sent to taxing authorities, but in this case board members said they were not aware of McManigal’s reply to Lynch until after it was sent. In any event, a county assessor is not required to take direction from the state board, which only issues rulings on appeal, a board member said.

“I think the public . . . is entitled to more consistency from the State Board of Equalization,” Lynch said, who was elected assessor in 1986. “Until recently they have been more professional. We don’t know what is going on, nor are we happy about it. . . . The State Board of Equalization has got to get its act together.”

When board members learned about McManigal’s opinion this week, they voted 4 to 0 with one abstention on Wednesday to immediately send a letter to Lynch rejecting the recommendation because it “does not reflect the position of the board, nor is it consistent with recent board actions.”

Paul Carpenter, who represents the board’s 4th District in Los Angeles, said: “We felt obligated to rush our response so that Mr. Lynch could be prevented from making a fool of himself. It may be that we were not in time.”

‘Keep Nose Out of Religion’

The four board members believe strongly that government should “keep their nose out of religion,” Carpenter said.

“It isn’t a question of whether you approve of the sanctuary movement or not. It is a question of whether you want to place government in the position of deciding what is religious procedure and what is not religious practice,” Carpenter added.

The one board member who was not present for Wednesday’s vote lashed out at his colleagues for interfering with the staff recommendation.

William Bennett, who represents the board’s 1st District in Kentfield, called his fellow board members “mostly political animals who go with the wind.” He said that the board should remain neutral on the issue until they hear from church officials who may choose to appeal the staff’s ruling.

Advocates of the refugee movement recently claimed that 42 churches in Southern California have declared themselves sanctuaries, though not all have sheltered undocumented refugees.

Our Lady Queen of Angels Roman Catholic Church, located in the downtown Los Angeles area, has provided sanctuary for Central American refugees since 1985. It also plans to provide sanctuary for undocumented workers who do not qualify for amnesty under the recently revised federal immigration law, said Father Luis Olivares, the church pastor.

Olivares said of Lynch’s position, “We would clearly see it as an intervention in our ministerial activities and therefore unconstitutional.”

Rabbi Steven Jacobs of the New Reform Congregation also opposed Lynch’s position. “We have a longstanding religious tradition that goes back thousands of years. . . . My own particular tradition is that out of the Nazi Holocaust, we have translated this in a very significant manner by offering sanctuary.”

Lynch said he first learned of the sanctuary movement last year after reading several articles in The Times. Lynch said he sent copies of the news articles to Sacramento along with a request for a legal interpretation from the equalization board.

Conway Collis, who represents the board’s 2nd District in Los Angeles, said he was not aware of any other assessors in California who have made similar inquiries.

Lynch “is not going to be able to violate the time-honored provision of sanctuary by religious institutions to serve his own political goals,” Collis said.

Lynch, who noted that he is a Roman Catholic, said he does not hold a political position on the refugee issue.

“This is strictly a tax matter,” Lynch said.