N.O. City Council calls for outside reviews of citywide property assessments

By Ben Myers

Source: The Times-Picayune | Nola.com

July 27, 2023

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday asked state authorities to review whether Assessor Erroll Williams’ office properly conducted a recent citywide reassessment, citing findings that the assessor used “sales chasing” during the last quadrennial assessment.

Williams has long denied that he uses the forbidden tactic, which involves selectively appraising recently sold properties based solely on what buyers paid. The council’s unanimous resolution asks the Louisiana Legislative Auditor and Louisiana Tax Commission to determine if sales chasing was used in the most recent assessment.

Representatives of the legislative auditor and tax commission said they would consider the resolution once they received it.

The council action follows Williams’ disclosure last week that assessments had increased by an average of 23%, prompting the council to promise a rollback of tax millages under its control. State law automatically imposes the rollback, but taxing bodies have the option of restoring the previous rates to capture more revenue.

The council called on other taxing bodies, such as the Orleans Parish School Board, to follow its lead on the rollback, which Mayor LaToya Cantrell also supports. Those decisions will be made when agencies formulate their budgets this fall.

“Every single member of the City Council has received countless emails and phone calls about the recent property tax assessment,” Council Vice President Helena Moreno said.

A spokesperson for the assessor, Devin Johnson, said the resolution is “nothing more than a political move trying to accuse this office of increasing taxes when they know that’s a false narrative.”

At the meeting Thursday, Council member Eugene Green explained how rollbacks work and urged anyone concerned about property taxes to speak up at public meetings of tax bodies as they undergo budget deliberations.

Questioning methods
Moreno questioned Williams’ methods almost as soon as he completed the quadrennial reassessment, pointing to past reports by the legislative auditor and Bureau of Governmental Research that sales chasing had occurred in the 2020 reassessment.

The auditor’s report found that the technique resulted in recently sold properties being appraised 15% higher than unsold ones. The report also said an Assessor’s Office memo had instructed staff to use sales chasing. The Bureau of Governmental Research issued similar findings.

Williams has said his office only considers sales prices en masse, on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, to determine fair market value. Sales sometimes alert the assessor to renovations or other alterations that impact property values, resulting in new appraisals. But those new appraisals are never based on individual sale prices, according to Williams.

Testifying before the council this week, Williams said the earlier reports were “staged to make it look like I chase sales.”

“I don’t chase sales. I analyze all the sales,” Williams said. “If there’s a change in character, I will change the value on the property.”

Rooting out the practice is within the purview of the Tax Commission, which would then have the option of ordering a redo of the citywide assessment, according to Michael Matherne, the commission’s administrator. Matherne said he’s not aware of that ever happening.

Matherne said sales chasing creates an uneven playing field between new homebuyers and their neighbors.

“It’s kind of like, welcome to the neighborhood, your tax bill is larger than all your neighbors,” Matherne said.

The 2020 legislative auditor’s report also said the Assessor’s Office declined to appraise more than 30,000 residential properties in the last quadrennial because staff did not trust the accuracy of a new mass appraisal system. The system was undervaluing small houses and overvaluing large ones in certain neighborhoods, according to the report.

Johnson said the Assessor’s Office has “been working nonstop” to improve the system, acknowledging the last quadrennial assessment had “too many inconsistencies and anomalies.”

“Our numbers this year are better and tighter than they’ve ever been,” Johnson said. “We’re in a much better place now, which is why we’re seeing assessments that are more consistent and closer than ever to fair market value.”

Still, Williams said this week he disagreed with the assessment on his own home, which resulted in an increase of more than 30%.

Under state law, the assessor is mandated to appraise his own property, and the Tax Commission then reviews that appraisal for accuracy.

“What does that say, really, for the rest of us?” Moreno said Thursday. “To me, that’s very concerning.”

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