Elected Versus Appointed Assessors and the Achievement of Assessment Uniformity

While the conventional wisdom of property tax reform is that assessor performance can be improved (assessment be made more uniform) if assessors are appointed rather than elected, the empirical literature on assessment uniformity has given little attention to this question. This paper uses data for Virginia, where both elected and appointed assessors exist, to explore the effect of assessor selection process on assessor performance. At least in the Virginia setting, the independent influence of assessor selection on assessment uniformity was not statistically significant, although the sign was consistent with the reformers' reasoning.