The Paperwork Revolution
Whitman County updates its land records to end a legacy of confusion and 'egregious errors' in tax assessment.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Assessor Siler is hard at work preparing for the assessment for 1900, which begins on the first day of March. The work will be much greater than for either of the past two years, as this year the real estate must be valued. The assessor has put in use a system of land records which has been greatly needed in Whitman County, and which has been in use in almost every other county of the state for a number of years. It consists of a complete set of plat books, which, when written up, will permit of none of the costly and egregious errors which have marked the old manner of doing business in the assessor's office. Heretofore no system of any value toward keeping the record of the ownership of real estate has been in use and it has necessitated the assessment of much property, especially town lots, as of unknown ownership. The new plats will be made by J. F. Fuller, which insures their correctness and neatness. They will show all roads and ownerships and will be corrected daily from the official records, thus keeping a true record. Under this system double assessment will be impossible. Often in the past, double assessments have been reported to the state auditor, in which cases the county at large has been compelled to pay to the state the extra tax.
“Heretofore no system of any value toward keeping the record of the ownership of real estate has been in use and it has necessitated the assessment of much property... as of unknown ownership.”
Accurate property records and public transparency are foundations of local government that are often taken for granted until they fail. This turn-of-the-century update highlights the struggle to move from informal, memory-based governance to a systematic, bureaucratic modern state.
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