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Boone County budget debate: assessor's office seeks TrueRoll software to audit exemptions; board weighs costs and intergovernmental sharing
Summary
The Boone County assessor's office presented TrueRoll software to automate audits of homestead exemptions, saying it would improve accuracy and could raise EAV and reduce tax rates; the vendor noted Lake County had used a similar process to collect prior-year adjustments.
Jessica, speaking for the assessor's office, and Braden, a TrueRoll representative, presented the vendor's property-exemption-audit software during the committee's budget discussion on Nov. 6. The vendor's software uses automated data checks to identify properties that appear to have ineligible homestead exemptions and properties that may be eligible but not receiving exemptions.
"What the program actually does is makes the process more accurate," Jessica said. She explained TrueRoll can identify where exemptions were granted to people who may not qualify and where qualifying taxpayers were not receiving exemptions, increasing assessment accuracy and potentially raising equalized assessed value (EAV) so tax rates fall for correctly assessed taxpayers.
Braden, a company representative, said the software applies consistent rule sets across records and uses many data sources to flag discrepancies, reducing the extensive manual labor otherwise required. Jessica said some Illinois counties, including Lake County, have pursued billing for prior-year exemptions identified by audit, but that most Illinois counties do not. Board members expressed concern about the legal and political consequences of back-billing taxpayers for past exemptions and suggested the county should not begin by pursuing past-year collections that could lead to contested claims. Several members said the school districts and other taxing bodies would benefit most from increased revenue and should be asked to cost-share; Jessica said she had not obtained commitments from other taxing districts.
Board members proposed alternatives: (1) place procurement funding into contingency in the current-year budget to allow more time to approach other taxing districts for shared funding; (2) pursue a limited pilot or phased implementation focused on going-forward accuracy rather than aggressive back-billing; or (3) defer purchase until next year's budget cycle. Some members favored moving forward now; others preferred contingency and additional outreach. No procurement vote was taken at the committee meeting.
The assessor's office offered to keep working with the board and other taxing districts on cost-sharing and to return with more information if the board directed staff to pursue funding.
