RESPONSE: This AGJD report prepared in 2000 for the Idaho State Tax Commission provides the history and background dating back to 1996 concerning the computer systems used by county assessor offices throughout the state of Idaho. Kootenai County did not participate in the State’s 1996 statewide RFP. In 2004, Kootenai County joined with Canyon County and Payette County to do their 3-county RFP and each county entered into their own contract. Canyon and Payette maintained parity with the State Tax Commission. Kootenai County customized the computer system. Problems plagued Kootenai County’s implementation from the beginning, most likely due to the customizations with the database crashing in 2005 and loosing data which had to be manually rebuilt. There were more problems in 2006, more again in 2007 on June 16, 2007, and on June 27, 2007 and more in 2008.  The computer problems continued into the year 2010 when on July 19, 2010, the County accepted the computer system as being furnished complete even though it did not function properly.  The February 24, 2014 Meeting Minutes from the Board of County Commissioners summarized the problems up to that point. The mistake of accepting the computer system as being furnished complete even though the computer system was not working correctly was repeated two more times in 2014 and again in 2015.  In 2014, the Assessor’s records indicate that the property rolls were not certified prior Assessor until mid-September of 2014, more than a month late. Judging from a January 8, 2015 news article, Jim Brannon did not take a liking to Auditor, Dave McDowell, working directly with his own brother, Assessor, Mike McDowell, regarding the late property rolls, leading to the abrupt resignation of Dave McDowell in January 2015.  The late property rolls in 2014 reveal that the statements made by Jim Brannon in 2022 were false when he told the Cd’A Press on August 9, 2022, that the proper rolls were never, ever, late.  

The problems that have plagued Kootenai Coutny’s computer system have continued up to the present day.  The problems with the botched computer system implementation had never been fixed.

This attached table is somewhat outdated, but it shows the different computer systems used throughout the different counties in the State of Idaho. Fourteen to sixteen counties use the same system as Kootenai County; but Kootenai is the only one that customized the system.

These are some of the reasons that as Assessor, I initiated project Sympatico with Commissioner approval and Treasurer’s awareness in early 2024 to restore Kootenai’s computer system to the “Idaho Standard” to achieve computer system parity with the State Tax Commission that would allow  Kootenai County to use over 500 system supports, checklists, audits and other tools, offered by the State Tax Commission’s Technical Services Bureau (TSB). With the Assessor’s Sympatico programming complete in late 2024 and ready for testing by the Treasurer’s Office, they took notice that with Sympatico the Assessor would now be able to use the State Tax Commissions TSB Dashboard. As a result, the Treasurer decided to follow the Assessor’s lead and start a Treasurer’s Office version of Sympatico, and that has delayed the Assessor’s implementation. Sympatico testing is now underway. It is good news that Sympatico looks promising. The overall project has been delayed as a result and has not yet been implemented.  This is one reason why I am running for re-election – to finish and restore Kootenai County’s system parity and compatibility with the State and then move on to the next phase of modernizing the Kootenai County Assessor’s Office which will include other innovations like Multiple Regression Analysis, AVMs, AI and a replacement computer system to maintain parity with the as they replace systems statewide