Looming cuts to King County Assessor’s Office could lead to workload breaking point
(The Center Square) – The King County Assessor’s Office is seeing cuts as part of the county’s proposed 2025 budget, further exasperating the office’s workload, which could impact taxpayers.
The King County Assessor’s Office’s 2025 budget could see a $1 million cut if approved as is. That translates into a loss of eight staffing positions, according to King County Assessor John Wilson. All the while, the department’s workload has continued to surge.
The King County Assessor’s Office, also referred to as the Department of Assessments, provides five core services to its customers: the property tax roll, property values, property valuation notices, appeal responses, and property tax exemption services.
King County provides roughly 47% of the state’s property tax revenue, according to Wilson.
The department has been using overtime funding to complete the work of collecting on the value of a new 2024 construction.
The proposed 2025 budget provides $300,000 for overtime costs due to the continued reduction in appraisal staffing.
During his presentation to the King County Budget and Fiscal Management Committee on Wednesday, Wilson said he accepts County Executive Dow Constantine’s proposed 2025 budget despite it containing “difficult reductions for us.”
Wilson said the department can not withstand any more budget cuts and staffing reductions while still managing its growing workload.
“There’s virtually no fat to cut from our budget; reductions we take now are starting to cut away at the statutorily-required muscle we need,” Wilson said. “Further cuts jeopardize mandated functions of the office [and] put millions of dollars in new construction revenue at risk for King County and others.”
King County’s parcel count is increasing by about 4,000 properties a year, which represents potential millions of dollars in new construction revenue. However, Wilson warned that the department’s staffing is falling short of the need.
“We must keep pace with the increased demands placed upon our department,” he said, “or our office risks losing millions of dollars of potential revenue.”
As interest rates finally lower, new construction will start at an increasing rate. The low staffing levels at the assessor’s office could risk failing local governments that depend on the property taxes, including the King County government as a whole.
Minimal staffing could also make existing taxpayers in King County pay more than their fair share in property taxes, according to Wilson.
Wilson explained that the way that Washington state property tax law works means that when his office collects on new construction value, that’s additional work in terms of gathering revenue.
“If you don’t collect that, your revenue demands remain the same, but that means that especially in the residential sector, they are going to proportionately spend more than if we had been able to bring new construction in and take up some of that revenue demand,” Wilson explained to The Center Square in a phone call.
King County’s new construction totaled more than $10 billion this year. This is the fifth consecutive year that the county has reached the $10 billion threshold in new construction.
