Storm Lake has won two rulings in its tax increment financing lawsuit against Buena Vista County, allowing the case to move forward and opening the door to a deeper probe of the county’s tax management system.
The lawsuit, filed in March 2025, stems from the city’s allegation that Buena Vista County misallocated more than $5 million in TIF revenue over a 12‑year period. The city argues the county improperly changed frozen base values inside Storm Lake’s TIF districts — values that, under Iowa law, are not supposed to change — and failed to include certain parcels in TIF areas, reducing the increment available to the city. Former finance manager Brian Oakleaf first raised concerns in late 2022, telling the city council that multiple red flags pointed to years of incorrect allocations.
Last month, Emmet County District Court Judge Shayne Mayer issued two rulings in the city’s favor. The first requires Buena Vista County to turn over district‑level audit logs from its tax management software or allow Tyler Technologies, the software provider, to retrieve them directly. Those logs show how taxable values were entered, changed and maintained inside TIF districts — and the city argues they are essential to determining whether frozen base values were manually altered. The county must comply by mid‑August.
The ruling follows months of dispute over access to the logs. In a deposition last fall, Deputy Auditor Karla Ahrendsen acknowledged the county had access to additional audit history data within its Tyler Technologies system. A later deposition revealed that a district‑level frozen base value was “manually changed” in December 2016 — a discovery that prompted the city to demand full audit logs. The county provided parcel‑level logs but refused to release district‑level records, arguing that its software lacked the necessary settings, that generating the reports would freeze county computers and that the request was “unduly burdensome.”
Judge Mayer rejected those arguments. In her 14‑page ruling, she wrote that parcel‑level logs “do not fully answer” the city’s discovery request and that the city had demonstrated the need for district‑level audits because parcel‑level logs did not accurately reflect changes to frozen base values. She also ruled that generating reports from existing data does not constitute creating new documents — a key point in discovery law — and found that the county would be able to produce the logs despite its claims of technical limitations.
The judge’s second ruling denied the county’s attempt to dismiss one of the city’s three legal claims — a conversion claim alleging the county intentionally excluded parcels from TIF districts, costing the city roughly $274,000. The county argued the city lacked evidence, but Judge Mayer ruled that questions of intent remain unresolved and must be decided by a jury. She noted that whether the manual modification of frozen base values constituted intentional conduct is a factual question inappropriate for summary judgment.
Both sides have already spent more than $900,000 on Des Moines‑based attorneys, and discovery is expected to continue through the fall. The city must now file an affidavit of costs related to the discovery dispute, and the judge left open the possibility that the county could be responsible for those fees. Additional motions are likely as the city analyzes whatever audit logs the county ultimately produces.
A jury trial is scheduled for June 2027 in Emmet County, where the case was moved to avoid conflicts of interest.
