Assessor's office working to correct deficiencies

EPHRATA — Oversight deficiencies at the Grant County Assessor’s Office in 2013-14 may have led to delayed or inaccurate property assessments, according to the findings from an audit released Thursday by the Washington State Auditor’s Office.

Current Assessor Melissa McKnight took office in 2015 but, she said, many of the issues identified in the audit still are being addressed.

The assessor’s office is responsible for evaluating property and setting values that are then used to assess property taxes. The auditor’s report said some property was not properly classified, and that in some cases, the Grant County Assessor’s Office didn’t evaluate new construction in a timely manner. State law requires all new construction to be evaluated within a year.

Upgrades to the computer system weren’t installed, the report said, which may have led to mistakes in valuing property. There was no independent review of the results “which increased the likelihood of error.”

“I knew there were serious deficiencies,” McKnight said, and the assessor’s office has been working with the Washington Department of Revenue and the state auditor’s office to address them.

Washington regulations require counties to meet a minimum standard when it comes to property assessments. The WDOR comes up with a market value for property in each county every year. “The market is a moving target,” she said. The county’s property assessments must be within 90 to 101 percent of that value.

For Grant County the assessments are about 80 percent of that value, McKnight said. The current assessor’s office staff is working to improve that said, she said, but “it’s not something that can be corrected in a year.”

The goal is to get to 92 percent of current property value, she said. That’s a level at which property is valued about what it’s worth, she said, not too much or too little.

That means some people will see increases, possibly substantial ones, in their property valuations – and eventually in their property taxes. “It’s not pretty. It’s ugly,” McKnight said, and added people can contact the assessor's office if they have questions on their assessments or tax bills.

The former chief appraiser was terminated in August 2015, and his replacement was promoted from within the assessor’s office, McKnight said. A second appraiser was added to speed up some of the work, which will help with the backlog of new construction appraisals, she said.

The audit report said county officials didn’t always upgrade the office software, which McKnight acknowledged in her reply to the report. That was due to “a significant lack of confidence in the software’s ability to transfer the new rates, as has been the case this year when we did go to new cost tables.” The software lost valuation information for about 30,000 parcels of land, but most of the information was retrieved, she said. She plans to submit a request to the county commissioners for new software, possibly as early as this week.

“There’s no overnight fix. It’s going take years." Grant County property owners could see adjustments for some time to come, McKnight said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.