Friday's Internet Edition, March 12, 2010.

Roane County assessor Emily Westfall said the program was established by the state legislature to analyze assessed values in all 55 counties and the methods assessors use to set the values.

The three-year program began last year in 19 counties. Roane is one of 24 involved this year.

Westfall said Tyler Technologies Inc. of Dayton, Ohio, would be doing the work in eight counties including Calhoun, Clay, Jackson, Lewis, Putnam, Ritchie, Roane and Tyler.

Two other firms, one from Ann Arbor, Mich., and another in Wheeling, were selected to work in the other 16 counties this year.

The companies will be examining property transactions that occurred between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

Westfall said property owners might receive mailings, phone calls and even visits from the company.

“One of our concerns is that this will cause some real confusion for the taxpayers,” she said. “We’re going to have strangers asking people in Roane County about property transactions that occurred three years ago.”

She said all appraisers would be carrying photo identification cards that indicate they are contractors working for the State Tax Dept.

She said the information being collected regards property sales, but no other personal information should be requested of taxpayers.

Westfall said taxpayers could start receiving questionnaires as early as this month.

She said persons with questions may contact her office.

“If people receive anything they don’t understand or have a question about, we would be happy to try to help them,” she said.

Westfall said she and other assessors have questioned the need for the program, since their work is already reviewed by State Tax Dept. officials on a regular basis.

“They’ve already been monitoring us every year since 1990,” she said. “I feel like this is a lot of duplication.

“My office already bothers the taxpayers enough with questions about what they believe to be their private business, like the price of their property and the cost of construction,” she said.

The Association of W.Va. Assessors, which represents assessors in all 55 counties, has voiced several concerns over the state-funded private appraisal program.

The assessors believe the private study duplicates the monitoring and oversight of the Property Valuation Training and Procedures Commission (PVTPC) established in 1990, when county assessors were instructed to reappraise property every three years on a rotating basis.

Under that program, state monitors make certain each assessor is following procedures in valuing property and have wide-ranging authority to correct problems.

The assessors say the private contractors are costing the state nearly $4 million to do what is already being done.

The assessors also have raised concerns that the project manager hired to oversee the study is the recently retired director of State Tax Dept. Property Tax Division. According to the assessors, that amounts to someone being paid to check the same work he did while working for the state.

“As an individual taxpayer, I am frustrated our state is paying $3.9 million for this study,” Westfall said.