The Tax Collector’s Secret: How Seattle Officials Hid Debts to Profit from Advertising

An Infamous Swindle.

Abundant facts clearly demonstrate that the public offices in this county are mainly managed exclusively for private emolument, in utter disregard of the public interests or the rights of taxpayers. A circumstance within our own experience will illustrate this proposition.

On the 24th of July we called upon Mr. E. Bryan, the Clerk and Collector of the Seattle School District, to pay taxes on certain lots. He stated that the amount due was $3.43 and gave us receipts for the same. We saw him hand over three receipts to me in his office.

On calling upon Mr. Bryan for explanation, we informed him that but the receipts were only for the special tax, and that the delinquents for which the property was advertised to be sold, were on the regular tax; a difference of which we had no previous knowledge and rightfully supposed that when we called upon the Collector and tendered the money for our taxes it was his duty to inform us of all the taxes in his hands for collection against said property.

The delinquent tax which the Collector withheld from our knowledge, is advertised at 30 cents; the charge for advertising it three weeks in the organ of the public plunderers, is two dollars and fifty cents for each description. There are over two hundred descriptions advertised for the same sale, a majority of which are taxed at less than 30 cents each, and the aggregate cost of advertising it, two dollars and fifty cents a description, is over five hundred dollars. This is four times the legal advertiser's rates for legal advertising, and more than ten times its ordinary charges for business advertisements.

It will publish a column advertisement for fifteen dollars a month, or less, by special bargain, and connive with an official to compel taxpayers to pay five hundred dollars for the publication of three short columns three weeks.

We were last week accused of 'lying' by the organ of the Territorial ring of public plunderers, because we spoke of the Intelligence as the organ of our local Tammany. What better evidence does the public want that the Intelligence is the organ of the official thieves, than that it supports them for a share in the public plunder.

For one we should deem ourselves guilty of conniving at public plunder if we submitted to this scheme of official robbery. Every taxpayer should contest it in behalf of public morality and we are certain that no such official fraud can work any legal lien upon the property sold.

A previous collector burned his papers to avoid investigation. The present collector would have shown more discretion and not less honesty by doing the same.