The Assessor Race Was About Technology. The Conversation Was Already Out of Date.

Local governance isn't a sexy business, and property assessment may be the least sexy corner of it. But the Deschutes County Assessor's race deserves a closer look — not for who won, but for what both candidates assumed the job's future looks like.

A quick reminder of how this works: Oregon's property tax rules are set by voters through statewide ballot measures. The Department of Revenue then works with the legislature within that framework to carry out what voters approved. The assessor doesn't set tax rates — the office determines the property values that those rates are applied to. It's technical, procedural work.

Both candidates, Tana West and Zachary Hastings, campaigned on technology as the path to doing that work with fewer redundant resources. Hastings emphasized tools that would reduce privacy disruptions for taxpayers on their own properties. West — the longtime deputy assessor, who won decisively and will lead the office — pointed to new aerial imagery and new assessment software, framed as a way to keep pace with rapid county growth without adding significant staffing cost.

Both of those goals are reasonable. Both are also already a generation behind.

Imagery matters — especially for enforcing Omitted Property rules, where it lets the assessor identify previously unrecorded improvements and bill back taxes on them. But imagery is an input. And when a county administrator says "software," it's safe to assume they don't mean the kind of application that could actually change how assessment works statewide.

AI is getting real backlash right now — over layoffs, low-quality content, and the cost and footprint of large data centers. Those concerns are legitimate and worth taking seriously; none of them is trivial.

But here's the part the backlash misses: no number of sales-data analysts, however senior or experienced, can match what a tool like Claude Cowork can already do on a valuation workflow. This isn't a forecast. It's something I do in my own practice.

What that looks like in practice: I've built models that handle subdivision development valuation, residential income valuation, and straight residential valuation. The model doesn't just produce a number. It exports the full analysis, explains the steps it took to reach the value, documents every adjustment it made, and cites the sources behind those adjustments — a defensible, reviewable record rather than a black box.

That capability changes the math of running an assessment office. A team that can generate cited, documented valuations at scale doesn't need the same headcount repeating the same redundant steps. But it's worth being precise about what becomes obsolete, because the word gets thrown around carelessly.

The profession isn't going away. Team leads will still verify results and manage workflows. Field inspectors will still confirm that improvements match permits. Someone still has to defend values on appeal before the Board of Property Tax Appeals and tax court. What becomes obsolete isn't the appraiser — it's the workflow: the built-in assumption that valuation throughput is capped by how many analysts a county can afford to hire.

This is coming to Oregon's assessment offices. Maybe not this budget cycle, but within five years it will be standard practice. The honest debate isn't whether to adopt it — it's how to do so while keeping valuations uniform, legally defensible, and accountable to the taxpayers footing the bill.