A Long, Exasperating Wait for Property Tax Refund

It’s only going to be another three or four weeks before Thom Smitham, a retired Los Angeles small-business man, gets a partial property tax refund that he was first informed would be his Sept. 9, nearly seven months ago.

For Smitham, it’s been exasperating. He’s made five visits to Los Angeles County’s Hall of Administration inquiring when the refund--probably between $2,000 and $3,000 when final calculations are made--will arrive.

Usually, according to his account, he got a cold reception. But now the ball is rolling. On Friday, Don Garcia, chief of the county Assessment Appeals Board, heard an agitated Smitham talking outside his office, emerged and had a 15- to 20-minute talk with him. It was Garcia who may have made the first effective inquiries on Smitham’s behalf.

Smitham e-mailed me Monday. I too was able to access officials at a higher level, and Tuesday morning the assistant assessor, Bob Olson, said the way will be cleared for the auditor’s office to cut a refund check in three weeks for three of the five parcels involved, and in four weeks for the other two.

Garcia cautioned me that the refunds might take “about a month,” and Marianne Reich (no relation to me), property tax division chief in the auditor’s office, estimated 20 days, “if everything works without exception.”

Olson said the responsibility for what has happened lies with the assessor’s office.

“We don’t 100% know what caused the delay,” he said. “But it’s certainly our fault. We got the information in a week or two, from the [Assessment Appeals] Board, and it just fell through a crack.”

Several years ago, he said, “we were concerned how long it was taking for refunds to be issued. . . . We created an appeals processing section” and now “typically within six to eight weeks, we take [a refund] out of our shop and send it to the auditor” to be paid.

But with Smitham it’s taken a lot longer, and, Olson said, “we’re looking at that unit to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

At the Hall of Administration, in fact, Smitham said, he got mostly scanty and sometimes misleading information.

The retiree filed his appeal last year, saying the assessments on six parcels he owned seemed too high.

On Sept. 9, he was informed in writing by the Assessment Appeals Board that in five of the six cases, it agreed with him. New market values were assigned to these parcels.

“I had paid the taxes in full, and so began my wait for the refund,” Smitham remarked.

He waited four months, until around New Year’s, and “then went to the assessor’s office . . . and asked how and when refunds on paid taxes were handled,” he said.

“I was told not to expect anything for at least six months. Moreover, the attitude of the staff was unhelpful and unprofessional. No one made an attempt to look up the information, and they acted as though I was interrupting their daily routine.

“I waited another month and returned. This time I was told that nothing was posted and they had not received notice from the Assessment Appeals Board.”

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Smitham went over to the board, which is a separate office operating under the Board of Supervisors, where he was told that such notice generally was given promptly to the assessor’s office, but that the board would resend it in this case.

“I waited two weeks,” he recalled. “When I went to the assessor’s office, nothing had been posted. I then spoke to Lito Hugo, an appraiser specialist in special investigations. He photocopied the notice (I had been sent originally) and said he would take it to the posting section and call me later the next week.

“I waited another two weeks. Having heard nothing from Mr. Hugo, I went to the Assessment Appeals Board to check on the ‘progress’ of my refund. A computer check revealed--surprise!--that nothing was posted. I was advised to go to the office of Rick Auerbach, the new assessor.

“In his office I spoke to Mr. El Cid De Ramus, who called Mr. Hugo, who told him he had taken the information to the posting section, but the person in charge was not there on this date and he would call Mr. De Ramus when he contacted her. Mr. De Ramus said he would call me . . . at least by the following Tuesday.

“I waited another week. Since I did not hear from Mr. De Ramus, I returned to his office on March 31. He was not in, but I spoke to someone else, who called Mr. Hugo. Guess what? Nothing had been posted, and the person responsible was not there.”

Smitham told me Monday, “This is where matters stand. . . . Somehow, I don’t think I would have been given seven months to pay, if there had been an increase.”

Smitham said he could only ask: “Is the system so poorly organized that a simple problem like mine cannot be handled? Am I being unreasonable to expect the bureaucracy to respond?”

Early April is a main taxpaying period for most of us, so I felt this was an apt subject for this week.

Garcia and his superior, Ron Mellan, deputy executive officer for the Board of Supervisors, told me Monday afternoon that the appeals board had given notice to the assessor’s office of its favorable actions on Smitham’s appeals well within the required one month.

But Michael Galindo, the county’s acting auditor, checked the assessor’s database later Monday and said there was still no reference in it to Smitham’s case.

By Tuesday, however, Assistant Assessor Olson said the posting had been accomplished. He asserted that Hugo had conveyed needed information to the appeals processing section in mid-March.

Overall, Olson added, “It is certainly not our intent to have such delays. Rick Auerbach’s No. 1 priority will be public service--in fact, one-stop service. We’re jointly training all four staffs involved--the assessor’s, the appeal board’s, the auditor’s and the tax collector’s--right now. Mr. Smitham never should have had to go around from one office to another.”

Of course not, I thought.

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com