What it takes to get tax abatement info in Lancaster: why won't Lancaster release the records?
 |
| Orginal image made by the "Midjourney AI." Prompt "A bureaucrat at a desk in swirling chaos" |
After last years "Quinquennial Revaluation" led to some puzzling property valuations around town, many homeowners in Lancaster requested abatements. How many, and how much was ultimately abated? The town is required to maintain and share public records of approved abatements; I've spent 45 days trying to get a copy of them.
Last year was the "quinquennial revaluation" in Lancaster -- every five years the Assessors Office revalues all our properties based on recent sales comparisons. I obtained a list of the new valuations and displayed the increases and decreased on an interactive map: you can read that blog post here.
Putting the increases and decreases on a map was interesting: in many neighborhoods there were 10% increases and 10% decreases within a hundred yards of each other. I assume that there are a lot of parameters that contribute to the valuations, but in some cases outwardly similar homes were valued very differently. Many neighbors ultimately approached the Board of Assessors to challenge the assessments and request abatement: I received a lot of email from people who were puzzled about their homes new value.
I'd like to say that I got my list of new assessed values from an Assessor's Office falling over itself to be transparent. I did start with a poorly scanned PDF of a printed spreadsheet from the town website. I did send an email to the assessor asking for a copy of the original spreadsheet. But the response I got told me to "submit a public records request" to the clerk, and getting a response to that took two weeks.
Ultimately getting the spreadsheet two weeks -- not long in municipal terms but approximately forever in the modern world. Long before I received the spreadsheet from the Assessor it proved quicker to just write a python program and scrape the data off the online property cards while we went out to lunch. (I have two decades of Lancaster valuation data now, if anyone is interested in it.)
This year I was interested to find out how many tax abatements were requested and approved, and where. Tax abatement applications are confidential and the Board of Assessors is permitted to meet in closed session to approve them. (This is one of the few situations where a municipal board is permitted to vote in closed session.) However, after abatements are approved, the Assessors Office is required to record specific details and make the records available for the public to review on request. (MGL Chapter 59, Section 60) It's not hard to imagine that valuable tax abatements that can be granted subjectively by a closed vote could provoke public suspicion; making the approved abatements easily available is one way to maintain some public confidence.
"The records which boards of assessors are required to keep pursuant to
this section shall be kept, in the order in which such abatements of
taxes are granted, in a book or set of books provided for the purpose
and in such form as the commissioner may prescribe. Such book or books,
or copies thereof, shall be open to public inspection. Every board of
assessors shall at the request of any person furnish one or more copies
of any record required by this section to be kept, upon the payment in
advance of a fee approximating the cost of such copy or copies."
On May 31st I sent an email to the Assessors asking what format I could request the abatement data in. I like spreadsheets, so I specifically asked about those.
At this point I want to state for the record: this was obviously a question. Let the record show that I actually wrote "I'm not familiar with what's available" and two of the three punctuation marks are question marks. All that notwithstanding, this question was converted into a Public Records Request. For any Public Records Request, the law grants the town 10 business days to formally respond.
Well fine. On June 9th, I finally received a long memo asserting that my "obvious question" was a request for records, and furthermore my "request" was not specific enough to identify the records I was requesting. Well, "duh", it was a question about what records I could request!
For the record, I don't believe anyone involved actually mistook my question for a request; this is some juvenile nonsense that effective leadership would squash.
But, whatever: adapt and persevere. I replied that I'd like a copy of what state law requires the town to maintain. In whatever format is available. Hey: if they won't tell me what's in their office, I'll ask what they're required to have.
A month passed before the next response, on July 17th. "The town asserts that your question as to what reports are available is too vague."