INDIANAPOLIS | The legislative labyrinth surrounding Indiana's property tax system proved too difficult Thursday for a state oversight panel to navigate.

The Local Government Property Tax Control Board punted on about $5 million in appeals sought by the city of Gary, it's sanitary and stormwater districts and Gary/Chicago International Airport.

Members of the state panel said they had little clue what the General Assembly's intentions were this spring when it extended the deadline for local government to appeal tax shortfalls sustained last year. The board unanimously decided to let Cheryl Musgrave, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, sort out the situation.

Lake County tax bills went out so late last year -- in December -- that Gary and its sister agencies didn't know how short they would be until the county distributed tax collections in March. City officials now say that assessment errors and taxpayer appeals shorted Gary at least $4.4 million while sapping $521,000 from its sanitary district, $100,000 from the airport and $73,000 from the stormwater district.

State law typically requires local government to take out a newspaper ad announcing any anticipated appeal of its property tax levy, which Gary and the sister agencies didn't do when advertising annual budgets last fall.

But city officials question how they were supposed to forecast shortfalls they didn't know about until the county distributed property tax collections six months later.