The Farcical Business of Assessing Land
A scathing look at state tax commissioners who fly through town to set property values based on faulty data.
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.
Regardless of whether the hearings now in progress by the state tax commission result in a greater or lesser percentage of state-equalized taxes coming to Benton county, this paper is of the opinion that the hearings are farcical and too superficial to furnish a true index to real estate valuations. The tax commissioner spends a few hours in a town, examines a few witnesses, and moves on. At the hearing in Kennewick Tuesday, one witness testified he paid $4,000 for a ten-acre tract, but that figure included personal property, not just land. The commissioner made no effort to ascertain this fact. Meanwhile, taxpayers foot the bill for the commissioners' salaries and expenses as they travel about the state. If we could have just a few more boards and commissions, it wouldn't be long until the value of our lands would be defined only by the price a buyer would pay for a tax title.
“The tax commissioner spends a few hours in a town, examines a few witnesses and goes on to the next. From the information thus picked up at random and on the run, the state commission will decide whether or not the valuations fixed by the county assessor are just.”
Tax assessment remains one of the most contentious points of contact between residents and government. The author’s frustration with 'fly-in, fly-out' bureaucrats setting property values without local context is a common refrain in rural Washington politics even today.
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