Pope’s Opposition to Plan for an Appointed Assessor

Cutting through the personalities and the politics, there is one basic policy difference between Supervisor Pete Schabarum and myself: He favors the supplemental property tax and wants more revenue from it, while I favor repeal of that tax as an inequitable and inefficient levy.

The supplemental property tax was passed in 1983 at the recommendation of Gov. George Deukmejian to finance the education reforms enacted at that time. The following year, as the state’s fiscal condition improved, the supplemental revenue was withdrawn from education and lumped into the general property tax account.

As a tax measure, the supplemental property tax is entirely deficient. It hits on those already paying the highest property taxes under Proposition 13--new homeowners and expanding businesses. It is also twice as expensive to collect as regular property tax (and five times as expensive as sales and income tax), and extremely confusing to taxpayers (who receive two or even three tax bills in the year after purchasing a home or other real estate).

Perhaps a necessary expedient in 1983, the supplemental property tax is no longer necessary, and I have led the fight to repeal it. Schabarum betrays his conservative principles by not joining in that fight.

As most of your readers know, I intend to announce my candidacy for the state Board of Equalization and will be leaving my post as county assessor at the end of this year. I nevertheless have great concern for the future of this office and am strongly opposed to the proposal by Supervisors Schabarum and Deane Dana to make the assessor appointive (without even the protection of a term appointment or removal only for good cause).

This proposal is simply an effort to extend the power of the Board of Supervisors at a time when too much power is already concentrated in too few hands in the County Hall of Administration. The ulterior purpose is to make the assessor a board-controlled revenue-generator in place of an independently elected official sensitive to the needs of the taxpayers.

It is ridiculous to call county government local when we have only eight elected officials in a county of more than 8 million people. To reduce that number to seven makes no sense at all.

There are many ways to improve county government. The Dana-Schabarum proposal is not one of them. I will oppose any proposal that does not preserve the independence of the assessor, free from pressure to generate more tax revenue at the whim of the board.

ALEXANDER H. POPE

Assessor

Los Angeles County