Ashley W. O'Donald - Unlocking Property Tax Secrets

A conversation with Ashley W O'Donald reveals the hidden complexities of maintaining fairness in property assessment

The assessment profession faces a fundamental challenge that few outside our walls truly understand: How do you ensure fairness when valuing everything from 1920s mill houses to multimillion-dollar custom homes? Ashley W O'Donald, Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Assessing Officials and Chief Appraiser for Catoosa County, recently shared insights that cut to the heart of what makes our work both vital and increasingly complex.

The Vertical Equity Puzzle

"When I explain it to a taxpayer or other government officials outside the assessment industry," O'Donald notes, "I use very simple North Georgia language: Are you giving a break to the wealthier people or are you giving a break to the poor people?"

This straightforward framing captures what many consider the most challenging aspect of mass appraisal. Vertical equity, ensuring properties across the value spectrum are assessed fairly relative to their market value, remains stubbornly difficult to achieve. The reasons are mechanical but significant: fewer sales at the high end, greater variability in luxury properties, and the fundamental challenge of appraising complex homes from the outside.

O'Donald shares a telling example: "A custom-built home in North Georgia... the guy took three or four years to build. He had these massive windows... To get these windows built, he had to send his builder to Michigan to build a platform on a flatbed truck to transport them."

How do you capture that value in a mass appraisal system? The simple answer: you often can't.

The Sales Validation Foundation

Perhaps the most overlooked element in assessment quality is rigorous sales validation. O'Donald describes himself as a "sales qualification nerd," and for good reason. The integrity of your entire assessment system rests on the quality of your sales data.

"I think people look for those same last names, right? Smith selling to Smith," he explains. "But they don't get on the map and click around. You know, Smith bought from Jones. Well, Smith owns three parcels surrounding it. That's why he bought it."

This attention to detail, taking 30 seconds to check adjacent ownership on a GIS map, can mean the difference between a reliable ratio study and one corrupted by invalid sales. As O'Donald emphasizes, "The mechanisms are there. You just have to use them."

The Administrative Burden of Good Intentions

Georgia's recent House Bill 581 created a "floating homestead exemption" designed to limit assessment increases on homesteaded properties. While sold as property tax relief, the administrative complexity has been staggering.

"You've got these separate values that you now have to track," O'Donald explains. The exemption applies to houses and up to five acres, but the calculation changes if the property has conservation use. Multiple houses on one parcel? Another complication. Which structure gets the exemption? How do you verify which house the owner actually occupies?

This exemplifies a broader pattern: well-intentioned policy changes that multiply administrative burden and introduce new error rates at each step. "Every year, there's going to be a change," O'Donald observes, "and some of the initial proposals were a little wacky."

Technology's Double Edge

The transformation from FoxPro to SQL databases around 2010 meant that "20 years of experience using this particular query and method was gone overnight." Yet technology has also eliminated weeks of tedious work. Field assessors now sync photos and sketches directly from iPads instead of spending days manually uploading digital camera files.

O'Donald's use of ChatGPT to draft taxpayer-friendly explanations of HB 581 shows the practical promise of AI tools, though with a crucial caveat: "It had a couple of sentences that were completely wrong. Totally wrong." The lesson? These tools amplify our capabilities but don't replace professional judgment.

Building Networks, Building Profession

When asked what advice he'd give to someone just entering the profession at 21, O'Donald doesn't hesitate: "Get out there and network."

He recalls calling a colleague about mineral rights, a topic he "knew less than zero about", and receiving invaluable guidance that corrected his fundamental misconceptions. This willingness to help, this peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, distinguishes assessment from being "just a job" and makes it a true profession.

"Get every piece of education that your jurisdiction will pay for," he adds. "If leadership calls you at midnight and says the person going to this class tomorrow got sick, do you want to go? Pack your bags and go."

Key Takeaways

Sales validation is not optional. The integrity of your entire system depends on clean, verified sales data. Take the extra 30 seconds to check adjacent ownership. Run down those outlier ratios.

Vertical equity remains our greatest technical challenge. Accept that high-end properties will always be harder to value accurately. Focus extra attention there, look beyond your jurisdiction for comparables, and document your limitations.

Policy changes compound complexity. Each new exemption or special provision multiplies potential error rates. Advocate for simplicity when engaging with policymakers.

Technology enhances but doesn't replace judgment. Embrace new tools while understanding their limitations. That "magic button" still doesn't exist.

This work matters. As O'Donald emphasizes, "You're affecting wealth, you're affecting people's money." Taking that responsibility seriously, caring about getting it right, transforms routine tasks into professional duty.

The assessment profession stands at an inflection point. Technology promises new capabilities, but policy complexity threatens to overwhelm our systems. The path forward requires both technical excellence and the kind of peer-to-peer wisdom sharing O'Donald exemplifies. In the end, ensuring fairness across the property tax system isn't just about running the right statistics, it's about understanding why those statistics matter to every property owner in our communities.