We don’t ordinarily turn the Opinion page over to public officials. It isn’t that they have nothing to say, it’s just that they have other channels for communicating with the public—their own Web sites, newsletters, public information officers, defense counsel, etc. And, usually, they use these other vehicles to toot their own horns. Why  turn over the readers’ space and ours for much of the same?

We make an exception tomorrow. We’re turned over a good portion of the Opinion page to Lee Kyriacou. He’s the executive director of the state Office of Real Property Services. He’s been in the local news quite a bit lately. He works with local officials trying to ensure that local property taxes are based on the most up-to-date assessment data. In most locales, property assessments are 50 and 60 years old,  which can mean that the owners of identical properties in the very same communities can end up with vastly different property tax bills. The difference can be thousands and thousands of dollars, depending upon the place and the length of time between reassessments.

You would think that kind of unfairness would be a rallying point for public officials. As perhaps you are aware, each and every one of our civil servants professes to care deeply about our financial well being, our economic health, blah blab blah. The reality is, too many use the public’s ignorance about revaluation and the political challenges associated with revaluation as excuses for sitting on their . . . hands. The institutionalized unfairness ought to be impetus enough for the officials to act. The rule of thumb is, post-reval, about a third of the residential owners in a given area will see their tax bill decline; a third will see increases; the remainder won’t see any change. A familiar analogy: the size of the pizza stays the same; it’s the size of the slices that changes.

Anyway, Kyriacou shares our space tomorrow to talk about his work, the reassessment process, and related matters. For more discussion about reassessment, you might tune into the Editorial Spotlight interview we hosted earlier this week with local officials, including some stand up folks rolling up their sleeves to ensure tax fairness. Wish there were more of them. To watch, go to Editorial Spotlight, click “on demand” and select the video from the menu on the right.