A recent legal settlement between Lewis County and Darigold Inc. has revealed a list of high-profile tax settlements.
In the last few years, major companies in Lewis County have received a combined total of more than $3 million in tax refund dollars after settlements with the county reduced their property tax values and, as a result, the property taxes they owe.
Lewis County has come to at least four major property tax settlements in the last three years
that have forced the county specifically to refund hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies relied upon to drive the local economy.
The settlements have also required other local taxing districts such as cities, the port, school districts and fire districts to refund large sums at a cost that is then often passed on to taxpayers.
Lewis County came to a settlement with Darigold Inc. earlier this year. According to documents provided to The Chronicle by the Lewis County Assessor’s Office, the settlement is the largest of four large multi-year property value settlements signed since 2023.
The other three settlements include tax refunds of more than $400,000 each and totaling more than $2 million. The county will be responsible for just a portion of that, with the rest coming from other tax districts, including the State of Washington, as well as the Chehalis School District, the Port of Chehalis, the City of Chehalis and more.
As previously reported by The Chronicle, the settlement with Darigold Inc. reduced the property value assessment for the company’s main production facility in Chehalis by roughly $70 million. It also made other retroactive changes to the property’s value stretching back to 2021. The result is a more than $1 million refund, as previously reported by The Chronicle.
In addition to the Darigold settlement, which was signed in August of this year, the county agreed in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to property value settlements with Hardel Mutual Plywood Corporation, Sierra Pacific Industries and Cardinal CG Company. It's also negotiating an additional settlement outside the court system with Hampton Lumber.
Many of the cases settled by the county are years in the making, with disputes over the company’s property value assessments stretching as far back as the 2019 assessment year and 2020 tax year. The refunds are so large, at least in part, because the value assessment challenges stretch back multiple years.
The earliest of the challenges from the companies date to before current Assessor Ross Nielson’s time in the top position. Many have taken several avenues to appeal their property values, going to the Lewis County Board of Equalization, the Washington state Board of Tax Appeals and filing lawsuits in Superior Court.
According to Nielson, he inherited many of the lawsuits and other property value appeals when he took office in 2022 following the retirement of longtime Assessor Dianne Dorey. By that point, Hardel, Sierra Pacific and Darigold had already filed appeals for their property values.
Nielson added that for large specialty industries, the county generally relies on assessments made by the Washington state Department of Revenue. Nielsen also said that the reluctance of companies like Darigold to disclose changes within their facilities could have affected value assessments.
“I haven't been out to their facility yet, but in sitting down and talking with them, they said, ‘Oh well, there's some things that we haven't reported,”’ Nielson said. “The age of their oven or something like that … They reported some information that we didn't have. We were able to plug those numbers in, and we found that we were too high.”
The settlements have impacts on previous and current tax years as Lewis County will be able to recover the money paid out through the tax refunds. That process is referred to legally as an administrative refund. While the state cannot collect an administrative refund, the county and all other taxing districts in the area will be able to.
According to a chart of preliminary assessed values from the Lewis County Auditor’s Office, the county will be able to collect nearly $600,000 extra in 2026 as part of an administrative refund.
The administrative refund exists to balance the local checkbook, and it also allows taxing districts to collect more money than the standard 1% revenue increase. This occurs because reducing property values and refunding taxes means the county collected less than it had planned in previous years and is entitled to that revenue.
More details on the impacts of each of the three settlements in addition to the recent Darigold settlement are available below.
For more specifics on the property value assessment between Lewis County and Darigold Inc., visit https://tinyurl.com/446ne3et to read previous reporting by The Chronicle.
Hardel Mutual Plywood Corporation
According to a settlement agreement signed between Lewis County and Hardel, the company’s plywood manufacturing mill in Chehalis has been revalued for every year from now stretching back to the 2020 tax year.
The exact change in value is unclear, but according to data from the Lewis County Assessor’s Office, the value changes resulted in a tax refund for the company of $800,714.90. The county was responsible for paying roughly one quarter of that total. The county paid out a total of $201,875.34 for the tax refund to Hardel, accounting for the amounts overpaid to the county general property tax and roads tax.
The Chehalis School District, however, was forced to pay out the largest of the refund amounts at a total of $223,970.98. That total is more than even the state will pay back in the refund and is so high in part because the school district is paying back money collected by both its general and bond tax levies.
Washington state paid out $217,017.75 in tax refund dollars to Hardel while the rest of the affected taxing districts — Lewis County Fire District 6, the Port of Chehalis and the Timberland Library — paid back a combined total of $157,849.96.
Sierra Pacific Industries, Inc.
Lewis County came to a settlement agreement with Sierra Pacific in September of 2024. The settlement adjusted the company’s property tax values for both land parcels and pieces of equipment referred to as personal property. The company’s properties were reduced in value by more than $75 million for the 2024 tax year. The properties were also reduced by approximately $12.4 million for the 2023 tax year, $11.5 million for the 2022 tax year and $15.7 million for the 2021 tax year.
As a result of the value changes, the company received a $950,816.84 tax refund last year with the county and the state paying the bulk of that refund. Lewis County paid out $265,268 for the excessive taxes it collected for its regular levy and its road levy. The state paid a slightly higher amount — $275,335.78 — for the excess it collected as part of its two standard property tax levies.
Lewis County Fire District 1 paid out the next largest refund of $175,726.83 for the taxes collected for both its general and EMS levies. The Centralia School District refunded $158,443.64 for money collected for its general and bond levies.
The Port of Centralia and the Timberland Library had the smallest refunds of the taxing districts, paying out a combined $75,649.58.
Cardinal CG Company
Lewis County came to a property value settlement agreement with Cardinal Glass in 2024 with the tax refund payment from the county dated for August 2024, according to the Lewis County Treasurer’s Office.
The settlement changed the values of the company’s properties in Lewis County for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 tax years, but the exact change of the values is not listed in the settlement. Cardinal Glass received a refund of just over $450,000 from the state, the county and other junior taxing districts. Unlike the other settlements, however, the exact breakout by taxing district was not made available by the Lewis County Treasurer's Office.
Hampton Lumber
The county is working toward one final settlement this year with Hampton Lumber. The proposed settlement would change the value of 10 parcels or properties for the 2024 and 2025 tax years. The agreement reduces the total value of the company’s taxable properties by $32.3 million for the 2024 tax year and by $35 million for the 2025 tax year.
While the Lewis County Assessor’s Office released the value changes for the properties, the settlement was reached outside of court, unlike the others. As a result, the settlement agreements are unclear.
The Lewis County Treasurer’s Office has not listed any refund amounts for Hampton Lumber, and it’s unclear if the county will have to pay a refund to the company.
