Monongalia County commissioners were told on Dec. 17 that a large cluster of property-tax exonerations — listed at about $237,497.21 — resulted from a clerical error by the West Virginia State Tax Department and a subsequent Office of Tax Appeals settlement.

“They had an employee who'd made a clerical error ... and they did not subtract any of the expenses on those accounts,” said Patrick, from the county assessor’s office, explaining the Office of Tax Appeals decision that produced the exonerations. Patrick said the accounts affected were personal property accounts tied to working interests for the Northeast taxpayer named in the appeals case.

Patrick told commissioners the cases involved tax year 2024, and that one additional well had not been valued at all for the same tax year. He said the unvalued well has an appraised value he described as about $11,000,000 and that the county plans to "back tax" that well to Northeast in tax year 2026, estimating roughly $140,000 in potential recovered tax revenue as a ballpark figure.

Patrick also placed the recent cluster in broader context, saying annual exonerations vary year to year and that, for the current calendar year, the assessor's office recorded roughly $770,000 in exonerations from a mix of Office of Tax Appeals settlements, tax-class corrections and personal-property adjustments. He explained how supplements and replacement tickets sometimes offset exonerations when taxpayers buy or sell vehicles.

A commissioner asked officials to make the origin of the exonerations clear to the public; county staff emphasized the changes originated with state-level appeals rather than local assessor office processes. After the explanation, the commission approved the overall consent agenda that included the exonerations.

The commission did not formalize a specific recovery plan on the record beyond the assessor's description that staff expect some future recoupment through taxation of the unvalued well. No precise recovery schedule or legal action beyond routine back-taxing was documented in the meeting transcript.