The Clark County Assessor’s Office violated state law when it granted the parents of a county employee an $83,078 reduction in assessed property value in 2013, according to a state report released Thursday.
The Washington State Auditor’s Office found that county Assessor Peter Van Nortwick’s adjustment of William and Genevieve Traub’s land south of Ridgefield did not meet the legal requirements for reassessment. The Traubs’ son, Willy Traub, is the levy manager in the county assessor’s office.
The auditor’s office was prompted to investigate the issue after someone filed a complaint. The audit did not judge Van Nortwick’s intent in granting the adjustment, however; only whether the action violated state law.
“Regardless of whether it’s someone from you or your brother or the parents of a county employee, I have to deal with everyone the same,” Van Nortwick said.
The Traubs’ property along Northwest 184th Street was among several pulled into Vancouver’s urban growth boundary in 2013. Van Nortwick said when those properties were assessed for the 2014 tax year, they were mistakenly given values closer to other, more valuable properties in that area, raising average land values from about $152,712 to $240,736, Van Nortwick said.
“That’s quite a jump,” Van Nortwick said. “Everyone in the neighborhood started appealing.”
The Traubs were among those who appealed, but they failed to attend their Board of Equalization hearing on April 9, 2014. Because they did not appear to present their case, the board, which hears property value appeals, could not legally grant them a property value reduction.
The couple contacted Van Nortwick about their inflated property value after finding out the Board of Equalization granted two of their neighbors who own similar properties a reduction in their property value.
Van Nortwick believed the property was incorrectly assessed due to a “manifest error” in a table. A manifest error is a factual error in information about a property, and can be used to justify the revaluation of a property by the assessor. Van Nortwick reduced the Traubs’ assessed property value by $83,078, to $157,658.
The state, however, disagreed with Van Nortwick’s assessment that the error was a manifest error, saying the correction was done “using appraisal judgment.”
“State law defines a manifest error as one that does not require appraisal judgment or revaluation of the property,” the audit read.
Doing so granted the Traubs unqualified relief on their property taxes, which were then passed on to other property owners in the following year, according to the audit report. County tax records show the Traubs paid $4,275.58 in property taxes in 2014. Property owners of similarly sized properties immediately south, southeast and east of the property paid $4,100.49, $4,355.72, and $5,226.43, respectively.
The county faces no penalty in the audit, but the auditor’s office instructed the county to comply with state law going forward. Van Nortwick said the Board of Equalization will have to be reconvened to consider the value of the Traubs’ property.
