On December 21, the Arizona Attorney General issued an opinion in response to the question as to whether the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors has “the authority to withdraw consent for previously approved cartography and property title personnel positions within the County Assessor’s office and assign those positions to a newly formed department that reports to the BOS?”
The question was asked by County Assessor Pamela Pearsall after County administrator Phil Bourdon and the Board of Supervisors Board removed personnel from her team in retaliation for her complaints about nepotism.
According to an article in the Examiner, Chaos reigns as AZ Attorney General rules against county board of supervisors, the County’s “contract with a company called Improvement District Services, Inc. creates serious cronyism and nepotism concerns because it is owned by Supervisor Chip Davis’ wife, Karen Davis. The company provides billing, collections, assessment, title searches for improvement districts, including Coyote Springs and Poquito Valley road improvement districts and Seligman Sanitary District.” But it doesn’t end there; Bourdon’s wife also works for the County.”
Yavapai County’s saga has been ongoing for some time, but when the supervisors “usurped its authority on May 4” by transferring cartography functions “previously performed by the County Assessor to a County department,” it allowed for extremely questionable actions.
According to the Examiner article, “One supervisor even had his property re-assessed by the new team that he supervises, to his benefit.”
For her part, Pearsall refused to certify the tax roll on December 21. She told the Examiner that she did not believe the data created by the new team under the supervision of the BOS is “credible.”
“If I had certified the tax roll I would have been taking responsibility for the Board of Supervisors employees and any mistakes that they may have made. I could not certify the Board of Supervisors’ staff’s work,” Pearsall told Bill Williams of the Examiner.
Much like the squabble between Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Governor, the Board of Supervisors tried to weaken the Assessor’s office by shifting the Assessor’s duties provided by law to the Board of Supervisors.
The Arizona Attorney General found:
The assessor is required to identify, by diligent inquiry, all real property in the county that is subject to taxation, to maintain uniform maps and records with assistance from ADOR, to report detailed property information on the tax roll, to account for all property in a county, and to supply geographical information to various county taxing districts. Cartography and title functions are necessary to an assessor’s performance of these and many other statutory duties.”
While Arizona statutes require a county board of supervisors to levy and equalize tax assessments (A.R.S. § 11-251(12)-(13)), they do not vest a county board with authority to identify property or to perform the mapping and titling functions necessary to assess property taxes. Arizona statutes presume that county boards rely upon the assessor’s records when performing their duties. See, e.g., A.R.S. §§ 40-344 (requiring the corporation commission, cities or towns, and board of supervisors to mail out notices to persons regarding the establishment of an underground conversion service area based on the records of the county assessor); 42-18303 (requiring county board of supervisors to rely on their county assessor’s records related to common areas when selling property to a contiguous property owner).
Williams concludes his Examiner article wondering whether the Board of Supervisors will follow the opinion of the A.G. or continue a course of illegal action.” Others wonder how the Board of Supervisors could ignore it.