We blogged this past spring about the ongoing dispute between the Multnomah County property tax assessor and the Portland Development Commission over whether the PDC's low-income housing operation at the old Fairfield Hotel should be exempt from property taxes.

Yesterday the Oregon Tax Court's main judge, Henry Breithaupt, overturned a prior ruling by the court's chief magistrate, Jill Tanner, and ruled in favor of the county. Breithaupt rejected the PDC's argument, which Tanner had accepted, that the county had violated the assessment procedures required by state law.

Since the procedures were on the up-and-up, Breithaupt ruled that he could now consider the merits of the question whether the PDC should have to pay property taxes on the old hotel. For an entity that leeches property taxes from many other government entities, it seems like the least the PDC could do.