Let's see if they notice

Remember those old Foldgers Crystals commercials?  You know the ones where they go into some fancy dining type setting and surreptitiously replace the gourmet coffee with the instant product like they're doing a Candid Camera type prank to "see if anyone notices." We have a new version of that in New Orleans. See what happens is Assessor Erroll Williams continually replaces Foldgers's tax liability on his spreadsheet with some fake number he doesn't bother to explain.

But this week, Together New Orleans issued another memo claiming the assessor is still leaving out $1.6 million from Folgers’ bill. And, the group says, his undercount suggests a troubling internal practice that could be erroneously giving extra tax breaks to hundreds of millions of dollars of business property throughout the city. 

To make matters more confusing, the Assessor’s Office has since admitted that the $6.5 million figure it released last week was itself inaccurate, but not because of the reasons cited by Together New Orleans. 

Williams’ spokesman Devin Johnson would not tell The Lens why that number was inaccurate, only that “the preliminary estimates missed the mark” and that the office would release more accurate numbers once they were finalized.

“I wouldn’t read too much into the numbers on the spreadsheet,” he said. “The final numbers are going to be significantly different.”

Johnson also accused The Lens of trying to produce “clickbait that’s biased and factually inaccurate.”

“So nothing new there,” Johnson said.

This isn't the first time a city official has published incorrect data only to turn around and scold a reporter for correctly reading what was disseminated.  Last year the City Attorney's Office withheld information from The Lens about short term rental fees until after their story was published. The subsequent release of data forced a "correction" of sorts.  I'm starting to wonder if this a deliberate tactic. 

Anyway, regardless of what his spreadsheet says, Williams is clear enough about his priorities. 

Soon after that, the City Council formally called on the assessor to create a new written policy for reviewing exemptions granted through what has historically been the state’s largest tax subsidy program — the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP.

But the request was passed in a non-binding resolution. Because the assessor is an independently elected official — not a part of city government — the council has no legal authority over his office. 

Williams explicitly told The Lens at the time that his office would not create a new policy. Instead, he would stick with the process he already had, even though, he admitted to The Lens, it was flawed and wasn’t adequate to catch the kind of mistake that Together New Orleans had discovered.

“The review process is not going to catch it,” Williams told The Lens in 2019. “It’s not the greatest priority for our office, obviously.”

Now, the office has once again undercounted Folgers’ tax bill. And, as was the case in 2019, the mistake raises the questions of what would have happened if Together New Orleans had not identified the error, as well as what other errors may be in the city’s tax rolls.

There's also some back and forth in the article between Williams and Together New Orleans over when or whether he is considering every appropriate factor in drawing up his assessments. Apparently the answer there is mostly "sometimes."  So, it still takes an exacting palate to tell the difference.