County To Get Help For Assessor’s Office Commission To Hire Four Workers To Catch Up On Backlog

The Spokane County assessor’s office needs a major attitude adjustment and four additional workers to dig out from under an avalanche of paperwork, a state consultant told county commissioners Monday.

Commissioners tentatively agreed to hire the workers for at least 27 months.

The assessor’s staff lacks “a real understanding that the only reason for them to be there is to serve the public,” said consultant Rich Baird. A business that provided such poor customer service could not remain open, he said.

Baird noted “a cloud over the office” that existed even before Charlene Cooney took over the job from Assessor George Britton in 1992.

Baird did not address other problems at the assessor’s office.

Inaccurate appraisals last year forced Cooney’s office to slash assessed values by more than $200 million, costing taxing districts hundreds of thousands of dollars in expected revenues. This year, tax bills were mailed late.

In March, Baird recommended investing in computers and more staffers to help verify tax exemptions awarded to senior citizens, non-profit groups and others.

The four employees he recommended Monday would do nothing for two years but work on “segregations,” as subdivisions and other land divisions are called.

About 3,000 segregations - some dating to 1989 - await processing, and more arrive all the time. In most Washington counties, such subdivisions are processed within a couple of months, Baird told commissioners during a 2-1/2-hour meeting.

No one knows how much the backlog is costing the county and other taxing districts in lost taxes. When property is split, its value typically increases.

The backlog affects every landowner in the county because it hurts government’s ability to provide services or cut taxes. When one parcel is under-assessed, other landowners must pay more toward bonds and levies, such as those for schools.

“It’s an equity issue,” said Baird.

The county is so far behind that the new employees will only meet the two-year schedule if they work more efficiently than anyone in the assessor’s office ever has, Baird said.

“They’ll be proceeding at a rate that they’ve not reached before and that other counties haven’t achieved,” he said.

County officials do not yet know what the new employees will cost, but Commissioner Steve Hasson estimated their wages and benefits at about $150,000 a year.

Commissioner Phil Harris said he wanted assurances that the newcomers won’t be pulled away from segregations for other chores.

In 1992, the county hired 10 temporary workers to help the assessor’s office catch up with its work. Harris, who was not a commissioner at the time, said there are widespread rumors those employees answered phones and did other office chores.

“I’m thinking we put these (four new) people in a room with no telephones,” said Harris.

While the new employees are working on the backlog, existing staff would work on the 1,500 new segregations expected this year, said Baird. For the first time, they would have deadlines for completing the tasks.

While suggesting new computers for the tax-exempt verifications, Baird is suggesting old technology for the segregations.

A computer mapping system installed in 1992 has doubled the time it takes to perform some tasks and staff should go back to doing the work by hand, he said.

The mapping system, used in no other Washington county, should not be abandoned, Baird said. Instead, the county should check on improvements to make it perform its intended task.

, DataTimes