Commissioner to give deposition in reassessment
Under subpoena, Washington County Commission Chairman Larry Maggi plans to appear as scheduled this afternoon to give a deposition in the offices of attorney Susan Key, who has represented the Washington and McGuffey school districts in their five-year quest for a countywide property reassessment.
“They blocked off two hours,” Maggi said of the question-and-answer session at the Peacock Keller law firm on East Beau Street.
Representing the commissioner will be a county solicitor, and Robert Grimm, special counsel in the reassessment case.
Maggi was the sole commissioner subpoenaed by Key late last month. Key said the depositions of Maggi and Washington County Recorder of Deeds Debbie Bardella, who also is director of the county’s revenue department, would not be open to the public. Bardella’s deposition has not yet been scheduled.
Of Tuesday’s grilling, Maggi said, “That’s part of being a county commissioner. I’ve been in depositions before as a state trooper, as a sheriff and as a county commissioner.”
Washington County’s last reassessment took effect in 1981. In November 2008, when the Washington-McGuffey case came to court, President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca told the commissioners she expected them to complete a reassessment during their then-current terms of office, which ended at the close of 2011.
In December 2008, Maggi, Commission Vice Chairman Diana Irey Vaughan and then-commissioner Bracken Burns submitted an affidavit to the court stating that the Sept. 30, 2009, date requested by the school districts as a deadline for the county to begin the reassessment process was “reasonable.”
Despite the threat of contempt of court, the deadline came and went. Harlan Shober replaced Burns on the county commission in January 2012. Key is again asking the court to weigh her contempt case against the commissioners for not completing the property reassessment.
After losing their last-ditch attempt to have the state Supreme Court get involved in the reassessment case earlier this year, the commissioners advertised for proposals, which are still being evaluated.
Submitting proposals were Evaluator Services and Technology Inc. of Greensburg; Pearson’s Appraisals of Richmond, Va.; and Tyler Technologies of Moraine, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas. No costs were revealed, because a contract is subject to negotiation.
According to Key, O’Dell Seneca gave the commissioners “until Aug. 16 to review those, so they could possibly purge themselves of some contempt if they come in here Aug. 28 with a signed contract with a vendor. If nothing is done by Aug. 28, that bolsters our request that sanctions be imposed for the delays.”
The commissioners contend that a reassessment would cost taxpayers as much as $8 million, money that would be wasted if the state changes the law on property reassessments.