Of the many bills being discussed during the current legislative session, one of the first to come out of the subcommittee phase involves the retention of county assessors.

Senate File 49 was penned by State Senator Jake Chapman, (R) District 10, and he says its purpose is to make assessors accountable to taxpayers. County assessors are responsible for the valuation of property, as well as any value adjustments that are made at any given time. Currently, assessors are appointed and they answer to a conference board of taxing jurisdictions. Those boards are made up of individual city mayors, county supervisors, and school board members. Chapman says there’s little oversight in place, which he feels would be rectified by allowing constituents the opportunity to vote on keeping their assessors. “As we discussed different alternatives to making sure they’re accountable to the people, we landed on the idea of retention votes rather than elections. A number of states elect their county assessors, (but) we feel like given our reputation with having retention votes for judges that this will be a good alternative to make sure our county assessors are responsible to the taxpayers of their county.”

Chapman says now that the bill has moved out of subcommittee, he’s hopeful to have some floor discussion on it in the coming weeks. To learn more about the latest from the current legislative session, click the link below to listen to the most recent Perry Fareway Let’s Talk Dallas County program with Chapman.

https://www.raccoonvalleyradio.com/2019/02/18/lets-talk-dallas-county-2-18-2019-jake-chapman/