Some county assessors in Oklahoma could find themselves without a paycheck if they continue to fail to follow state property valuation protocols, state Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones said.
“We will review it in June, and if they are not making progress and making the efforts to get it corrected, then they could possibly go into level 2 and could go into level 3 as quick as December of next year,” Jones told Tulsa World.
Jones’ comments follow the release of a statewide performance audit that found 16 counties received failing scores regarding how they valued taxable properties.
As a result, the state Tax Commission has placed the 16 county assessor offices, many of which are in southeastern Oklahoma, in the first of a three-level, non-compliant status, Jones said.
County assessors who reach a category 3 noncompliance status are subject to having their paycheck suspended and their offices taken over by the state until compliance is achieved, Jones said.
At issue is a performance audit that the Tax Commission performs at the direction of the state Board of Equalization. The annual audit was revised in 2011 with the goal that it more accurately measure county progress and compliance with computer-assisted mass appraisal of taxable properties.
“Originally I think we had 28 the first time (that were in compliance), and we are slowly working our way up,” Jones said. “The goal is to make sure the property-tax system is fair to all taxpayers. In many cases, we are seeing they have not brought the values to where they are needed to be and subsequently the tax base is lower, and that all goes into the formula of how much goes to the counties and how much goes to the public schools.”
Although scores continue to improve, several counties continue to struggle with the use of computer-assisted mass appraisal, or CAMA, methodology to value individual properties, according to the audit.
“In some cases, if you are undervaluing the property, that means others in Oklahoma are having to pick up a bigger share of the burden,” Jones said.
Another reason for such valuation issues, according to County Assessor Cathy Haynes, is that her office continues to use a state-provided computerized property-valuation system that is more than 20 years old.
“It’s (the system) just old and it’s hard to get it to produce what we need it to produce,” she said. “A lot of our reports that we have to run to do analysis with are still in the DOS format, and so that’s nearly obsolete,” referring to the computer disk operating system that was common in the 1990s. State officials have updated the system many times, but sometimes the updates would alter existing data that needed to be corrected by assessor office employees.