ELECTED VERSUS APPOINTED ASSESSORS AND THE ACHIEVEMENT OF ASSESSMENT UNIFORMITY*** JOHN H. BOWMAN* AND JOHN L. MIKESELL** ABSTRACT county districts; they should be appointed for indefi- nite, rather than fixed, terms; and should be subject While the conventional wisdom of prop- to removal for good cause, including incompetence, by erty tax reform is that assessor Perfor- the appointing authorities (2, p. 16). mance can be improved (assessment be More recently, the 1988 Annual Confer- made more uniform) if assessors are ap- ence on Taxation of the National Tax As- pointed rather than elected, the empirical sociation-Tax Institute of America de- literature on assessment uniformity has voted a session to the topic of "Assessment given little attention to this question. This Administration-Elected or Appointed." paper uses data for Virginia, where both This session featured presentations fi-om elected and appointed assessors exist, to states representing three approaches: ap- explore the effect of assessor selection pro- pointed assessors (Nhnnesota) [251, elected cess on assessor performance. At least in assessors (Arizona) [91, and a combina- the Virginia setting, the independent in- tion (Virginia) [161. fluence of assessor selection on assessment Reforiners see appointment of the as- uniformity was not statistically signifi- sessor as part and parcel of the task of cant, although the sign was consistent with professionalizing property tax adminis- the reformers' reasoning. tration. ACIR reasons that, everything else equal, more professional assessors should produce better (i.e., more uniform) as- I T is an item of faith among property sessments dm less professional ones, and tax reformers that appointed assessors that appointment is more consistent with are preferable to elected ones, but the em- professionalism than election: pirical literature has given little atten- Appointment of the assessor does not assure com- tion to this issue. This paper addresses this petent performance any more than it does for other gap in the literature, using data from key administrative positions, and there are many ca- Virginia, a state in which both elected and pable elective assessors; but when appointment is appointed officials are responsible for the limited to persons with certified professional quali- fications there is more assurance of employing a per- assessment function. son with the required technical and administrative skills than if the decision is left to the voters. ... [R]unning for reelection steals time from work of as- 1. Introduction sessing, and when the turnover in otice is frequent a Community is likely to experience a succession of How assessing officers are selected long incumbents each leaming his job at public expense [2, has been considered important to the per- pp- 105-1061. formance of assessment responsibilities. It might be thought that an elected as- The landmark two-volume 1963 study by sessor would be more subject to political the Advisory Commission on Intergovern- pressures that might compromise techni- mental Relations, The Role of the States cal assessing performance, but insulation in Strengthening the Property Tax, con- from such pressures often is not claimed cluded: as an advantage for appointment of as- Recommendation No. 16. All assessors should be sessors: "The appointive assessor, al- though he does not have to run for elec- appointed to office, with no requirement of pn'l:)r dis- trict residence, by the chief executives or executive tion, may be no less subject than the boards of local governments when assessment dis. elective assessor to pressure group oppo- tricts are coextensive with such goverrunents and by sition to equitable assessing" [2, p. 1061. the legally constituted governing agencies of multi- On balance, though, the traditional ar- *Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA gument still is that appointed assessors 32384. can be expected to perform better than **Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. elected assessors.' 181 National Tax Journal, Vol. 42, no. 2, (June, 1989), pp. 181-89