Speaking of which (qualifications that is) the RCN headline piece notes that the General Council for the State Comptroller's Office has intervened in the lawsuit by Steve Kirkham and Jerry Duncan, whereby Dun-Kirk claims Teresa is giving them unfairly high tax appraisals because of bad blood. After checking on some things I think the marital problems have little to do with it and someone in the Assessor's office is simply incompetent. I suggest anyone who is curious go to www.Zillow.com and compare that real estate site's valuations with the Assessor's valuations which can be found at Assessment.tn.

For example, I recently appeared before the Board of Equalization regarding a property at 150 Claygate Court in Kingston. The Assessor's office recently raised the valuation 2.7% because the developer completed his perfomance bond on the roads and sidewalks and that infrastructure was transferred to the Condo Association. Let's note that roads and sidewalks have exactly ZERO market value, and in any case a condo owner's portion is paid for by the original purchase price. That is absolutely brain dead incompetence. Zillow shows the property value at around $265,000 and the Assessor has it at $336,000.

Oddly enough the Assessor has her own home appraised at $408,400 while Zillow shows it at $289,000, which is very close to the actual sales price of the other unit in her duplex. Steve and Jerry should relax and understand that it's not just them. The misguided assumptions by the Assessor's office used in the valuation process have, by one estimate to be presented as evidence in one TVA trial, resulted in over $600,000,000.00 (as in 600 Million Dollars!) worth of unfair valuations in Roane County and the resulting unfair property taxes.

A bombshell of a statement made by the Assessor's staff at my Equalization Board hearing is that they used TVA's determination of which properties had been devalued by the ash spill. That in and of itself is an outrage! They took TVA's side against TVA's victims? Unbelievable!

On top of that staff held fast to the claim that there's nothing they can do even with that statement hanging in the air and the full knowledge of everyone in the room that they had the discretionary ability to go back and lower every valuation in Swan Pond while refusing to do so for other lake front and lake view properties. How can you look people in the eye and claim it is illegal to do something for one group of Roane County property owners when you have already done it for others?

There's more but I'll leave folks to digest this for now.

I think this campaign slogan should be "It's the incompetence, Stupid!"

Beyond that there is the question of whether TVA had any undue influence on the valuation process in the Assessor's office? Perhaps that would be a better use of the General Council for the Comptroller General.