Assessor Errors Cost Millions, Rival Says : Election: Candidate Jay Curtis shows a 5,000-page list of alleged mistakes. ‘He’s wrong,’ replies incumbent John Lynch.

Seeking to enliven the Los Angeles County assessor’s race, a challenger to Assessor John Lynch on Monday said that property tax records are so full of errors--including use of a postal zone code discontinued 20 years ago--that local government has lost millions of dollars in revenues.

“What this means is that thousands upon thousands of taxpayers are getting the wrong tax bills; some are paying too much, others are not paying enough and some can’t get a tax bill at all,” said Jay Curtis, one of six challengers to Lynch in the June 5 election.

Lynch responded, “He’s wrong,” and Lynch’s chief assistant, Roy Sharman added, “People must be getting their tax bills. Otherwise, their property would be owned by the government” for non-payment of taxes.

Curtis, president of the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Assn., claimed to have found 2.7 million errors in the assessor’s computer records, including thousands of undervalued parcels.

“I conservatively estimate that there are literally hundreds of thousands of parcels where the valuation is clearly wrong,” Curtis said. He estimated that property countywide is undervalued by $10 billion, costing local governments $100 million in lost revenues.

The errors, he said, include 320,000 addresses of parcels containing postal zone numbers discontinued by the Postal Service more than 20 years ago, such as Los Angeles 9, Ca. He said there are also thousands of addresses on the tax roll without zip codes, making it difficult for taxpayers to receive their bills.

One of the errors that “would be funny if it didn’t cause so many problems,” Curtis said, is that thousands of parcels have misspelled city names, such as “Asadena” for Pasadena and “Aramount” for Paramount.

The assessor said that Curtis’ analysis of the tax rolls relied on outdated information and that many of the errors, such as incorrect mailing addresses or zip codes, had no effect on whether the property was properly assessed.

Lynch noted that David Mulligan of CD-Data, the computer expert who analyzed the tax roll for Curtis, unsuccessfully sought a contract with the assessor last year. Mulligan confirmed that he sought the $30,000-a-month contract, but said the matter did not influence his work for Curtis.

At a press conference outside the County Hall of Administration, Curtis displayed a 5,000-page computer printout of the alleged errors. Curtis delivered the printout to the Board of Supervisors along with a request for an investigation.

“No wonder Lynch threw out the auditor-controller and refused to let him audit his department,” Curtis said, referring to a highly publicized incident in 1986 in which the assessor tossed county auditors out of his office. Lynch contended that a county audit was unnecessary because it would review procedures established by his predecessor, Alexander Pope.

A grand jury audit of the assessor’s office in 1988 found millions of dollars in billing backlogs in the property tax collections. Since then, Lynch said, many of the problems have been worked out.

Lynch was a 14-year veteran of the lower ranks in the assessor’s office before his election in 1986. He used his ties as a longtime Republican volunteer in the San Fernando Valley--and an endorsement from the late tax fighter Howard Jarvis--to win the job vacated by Pope.