Open Appeal to Walt Peffer

Overhaul Access to Assessor Site

When I wrote about website developers changing the Douglas County Assessor site (https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/assessor-abandons-privacy-control), some thought I was just being paranoid or was joking. I was not.

The Assessor site is based on a simplistic idea: since the information is public information, anyone should have access to it. This is false. Public information must be protected from vandals and those who wish to harass the public.

The Omaha Public Power District and the Metropolitan Utilities District require you to create a username and password to access your information on their site. “Why? Is someone else going to hack in and pay my bill?” No, the utilities realize what you are being charged and your ability to pay deserves protection. Yet, the Assessor site fails to notice this.

As shown below, the only thing preventing anyone from accessing information about you, your worth, and your ability to pay taxes, is to merely press “I agree” which means nothing because the site has no idea who is clicking on such a link. “I agree” could easily mean, “Thanks for letting me cut your legs and head off to kill you”.

House flippers are exploiting this. They know what the evaluation price of a home is and will cleverly offer just a thousand dollars more when they know the house is worth far more, like 10 thousand dollars more. There are also realty investor groups from all over the world who make such offers. Hundreds of homeowners are being ripped off by the public access to their home evaluations.

Here are the reforms I recommend. First, users of the Assessor site should be required to create a username and password to access the information on the site. In creating such access, when they click “I agree”, the County has some idea of who is agreeing to the request and has the ability to enforce such agreement. Secondly, there should be two types of registered users: unvalidated and validated.

The validated users would provide evidence such as photo ID or proof of living in the county and should have a much greater range to the details in the site, including property pictures and links to tax payments. Unvalidated users would merely have access to address searches and merely the amount of evaluation and nothing more. For both types of users, they should declare what they are seeking and why they are on the website. At the same time, residential property owners should have the ability to request their name not be used in search functions and their results, another reason why such property owners should be able to create an account with a username and password.

There are developers who are going to object and perhaps numerous activist groups who will object, but their objections are a vacant argument. Government has an obligation to protect public assets and how they are accessed, just as public libraries do in protecting books. This change is merely enforcing a policy of protective access. Journalists will still have the ability to check up on who is paying their taxes and on what property. I am certain some will say ” Well no one else is doing it this way”. Sorry, drop the conformity performance. Let us think ahead and do the innovation in protecting the privacy rights of property owners.