‘Series of screwups.’ Former Tarrant Appraisal worker says web issues hampered protests

A former Tarrant Appraisal District employee told the TAD board that the agency’s website issues undermined homeowners’ ability to protest their property tax appraisals this year.

Patricia Nolan, who left the agency in July after nearly nine years, addressed the board at its Aug. 11 meeting in a closed session because it was a personnel issue. She shared her concerns and what she said in the meeting with the Star-Telegram.

After the meeting, chief appraiser Jeff Law said he could not discuss the details of Nolan’s address to the board. But he said her concerns centered on issues that came up in mid-April, which have been fixed. She disagrees.

TAD’s website — which is essential to taxpayers’ interface with the agency — still does not function, she said.

The site went down last fall and relaunched in April hours before the agency’s busiest season. Taxpayers quickly learned it didn’t have the same functionality as the old website.

TAD.org failed to load for many visitors. Those who were able to access the site couldn’t use the automated market review tool until weeks into the 30-day period taxpayers are given to protest their appraisals. Access to this tool is required by law.

“We internally did not know what it could and couldn’t do,” Nolan said about the website.

After public outrage, including a letter from Keller Mayor Armin Mizani calling website failures “inexcusable,” Law extended the protest deadline by 15 days to May 30.

At the time, information from the agency came in the form of emailed statements. Nolan’s experience as an employee in TAD’s Appraisal Review Board department provides a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes.

“My goal is to make sure that the property owners of Tarrant County are served well and are given every opportunity to get their due process of law,” she told the Star-Telegram.

‘These people pay our salaries’

Nolan said her daughter noticed she was quieter than usual after work this past spring.

When asked why, Nolan told her daughter, “I’ve just been beat up for eight hours.”

Due to the website issues, thousands of frustrated taxpayers were calling TAD. Nolan said she fielded about 100 calls a day.

She’d been at TAD for more than eight years, so she wasn’t new to the pressure of springtime at the appraisal district.

“It was unbelievable,” she said.

First, taxpayers’ login information from previous years did not work, but they were never told they needed to create a new account, Nolan said. So they called TAD.

Nolan said she and her colleagues weren’t told about this change. They learned by asking around. That didn’t alleviate the callers’ frustration.

“The thing about it is, these people pay our salaries,” she said.

In addition, some of the PINs on people’s notices did not work. Those people were directed to the webmaster. It took up to 10 days to receive a new PIN.

Another sign of internal communication issues at the agency is the disagreement as to why the website went down in the first place.

Law said the website was taken down in the fall for planned changes to beef up security. He did not tell the board ahead of time.

Nolan said it was common knowledge among her colleagues that the website had been hacked. Law denies this. An employee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution corroborated Nolan’s account.

The Travis County Appraisal District website was hacked on Sept. 11, 2022. The Dallas County Appraisal District website was hacked on Nov. 8, 2022.

ARB hearings

The process of scheduling and preparing for Appraisal Review Board hearings was also impacted by the website’s failures, Nolan said.

TAD requires that taxpayers upload their protest evidence at least five days before their hearings.

But this year, some property owners were unable to upload their evidence documents to the TAD portal. As a result, not everyone made the deadline; some tried to reschedule.

“It was just a series of screwups,” Nolan said. “I mean, there was no planning to try to get these people the information that they needed.”

The most common complaint Nolan heard about the website was: “I can’t do what I need to do to file a protest.” They were right, she said.

Despite technical obstacles, more than 28% of residential accounts filed protests. That’s up from about 22% in 2022 and 16% in 2021, according to TAD.

But the numbers don’t capture the full picture, said Nolan.

“Time after time, people would say, ‘You’re trying to circumvent me from having my hearing,’ which is true. All the things that they didn’t do would circumvent a person from having their due process,” she said.

Vote of confidence

Nolan said she’s seen an appraisal district run well. Her ex-husband is Ken Nolan, the chief appraiser at Dallas County Appraisal District.

He ran Dallas “like a business,” she said.

In a closed door executive session at Friday’s board meeting, Nolan said she shared her concerns about the website changes as well as her experience of workplace culture at TAD.

She opened her discussion with a point she believes is very important: “I’m not a disgruntled employee.”

When the board returned to open session, the five board members voted 3-2 on a vote of confidence regarding Law’s leadership, as stipulated by the letter of repair issued to Law in April.

The letter gave him 90 days to address 11 items of concern, including the development of a plan to repair the agency’s reputation and ensuring that the agency’s computer systems and website comply with statutory requirements.

Tony Pompa, JR Martinez and Jungus Jordan voted yes. Rich DeOtte and Vince Puente voted no.

“This really boils down to issues that came up that continually have been coming up where the chief appraiser has taken positions that were against certain taxpayers,” DeOtte said.