Your guide to the L.A. County assessor race: Incumbent Jeff Prang faces four challengers

The county assessor’s job seems straightforward: determine the value of properties and, hence, how much their owners pay in taxes. But assessing L.A. County — a place with massive wealth disparity, home to the most people and properties of any county in the country — can be a more political role than its administrative title suggests.

California laws generally dictate tax rates, but the assessor handles appeals, implements tax breaks and also finds new properties to assess — not just houses but also business holdings, boats and aircraft. For example, incumbent Jeff Prang found nearly 1,000 unassessed aircraft this year worth $3.5 billion.

The office prepares the annual assessment roll. Last year, it valued more than $2 trillion worth of property, leading to more than $20 billion in property tax revenue. That money makes up nearly 25% of the county’s general fund, flowing into public services such as law enforcement, education, health services, libraries and parks.

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Done right, it’s normally an under-the-radar role, but the office can be abused. In 2012, county assessor John Noguez was charged with accepting bribes in return for lower property assessments, leading to a court battle that’s still going.

After Noguez stepped down, Prang was elected to the office in 2014 and won reelection twice, most recently in 2022 with 50.15% of the vote.

Four people are challenging Prang for the office, and each has a different vision and priority for the role.

Transparency is top of mind for many, especially in the wake of the Noguez scandal. Others are prioritizing the preservation of Proposition 13, California’s famous tax amendment from 1978 that sets the base property tax rate at 1% and caps annual increases at 2%. Critics have long called for reform, claiming the code contributes to California’s housing crisis by disincentivizing sales and preserving extremely low tax rates for longtime homeowners.

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Jeff Prang has served as L.A. County assessor since 2014. He modernized the office during that time, digitizing millions of paper records and creating a portal to help residents search for assessment records.

Sandy Sun, a certified appraiser and a 26-year veteran of the L.A. county assessor’s office, is cross-trained as an assessor for both real property (houses, land, etc.) and personal property (vehicles, jewelry, etc.). She ran for assessor in 2022, receiving 22.5% of the vote.

Stephen A. Adamus is a property assessment specialist and a 14-year veteran of the L.A. county assessor’s office. During that time, he worked on changes to Proposition 13’s ownership provisions and conducted assessment appeal hearings. Adamus sued the office as a whistleblower in 2019, claiming he was pressured to give favorable treatment to connected taxpayers, and was awarded damages as a result.

Rob Newland is an appraiser who has been valuing real estate property since 1998. He said his expertise in property valuation, housing markets and the economic impact of property taxation are critical for the role of assessor.

Steven B. Palty has 45 years of experience as a tax consultant and regularly speaks to homeowners, renters and small business owners about inflation, rising property values and the effects they have on property taxes.

During his previous three terms, Prang prioritized modernizing the assessor’s office through a $130-million investment in new technology. He said it’s been paying dividends, and recent successes include new software that tracks down previously unassessed aircraft, as well as a new system that took less than 90 days to reassess thousands of homes destroyed in last year’s fires, delivering tax relief to victims.

He would continue that effort, replacing outdated systems, improving efficiency and simplifying the assessment process for property owners. Prang said fairness is a top priority: closing loopholes to make every property owner pay their fair share while also expanding access to tax relief programs to help seniors, veterans and nonprofits.

Sun is prioritizing tax savings for homeowners. There have been multiple efforts to reform Proposition 13 over the years, and Sun said it’s vital to stop such reforms and preserve the law in order to protect homeowners and seniors from being excessively taxed and forced out of their homes.

Her second priority is pushing legislators to increase the amount of the homeowner exemption, a tax break that allows homeowners to lower their property assessment by $7,000 on their taxes, bringing a savings of $70. The $7,000 figure was established in 1974, and Sun said it’s long overdue for an increase.

As a longtime veteran of the office, she also wants to reduce the backload of assessment appeals by fully staffing the assessor’s office and providing proper training to employees.

Adamus said the role of assessor should be apolitical and claimed the current administration gives favorable treatment to taxpayers with wealth or influence. His campaign is built around removing “waste and mismanagement of public funds.”

Adamus also is focused on tax savings for homeowners. He wants to protect Proposition 13 and advocate to increase the homeowner exemption and for a new ballot initiative to revive Proposition 58, the tax law that allowed parents to pass properties on to their children with no reassessment. The proposition was replaced in 2021 by Proposition 19, which places limits on such transfers.

Newland envisions a new responsibility for the assessor’s office: data analysis. He said the office holds one of the largest property datasets in the country, and the information can reveal patterns about land use, vacancy and redevelopment opportunities.

His main priority is making private aggregated data public. One example would be using vacancy maps to identify areas to redevelop. Another would be using homeowner exemption records to reveal who is using their home as a primary residence and who isn’t, which could crack down on illegal short-term rentals and bring them back to the market.

Palty doesn’t have a website yet but said his campaign is built around reducing the tax burden for residents and eliminating waste and fraud in the assessor’s office.