Two of three employees of the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office who alleged that management gave favorable treatment to connected taxpayers have been awarded damages by a jury.
Stephen Adamus, Yvonne Austin and Scott Woods alleged in a long-running Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that County Assessor Jeffrey Prang, his top managers and county lawyers violated tax codes to benefit property owners with ties to elected officials by giving them favorable decisions on reassessments. The trio also contended that the county intentionally lost legal cases, reversed property tax decisions and reimbursed millions of dollars to individuals and corporations in back taxes.
On March 11, Judge Christopher Lui signed a judgment awarding Adamus $570,000 based on a January jury verdict. Austin won $255,000, but Woods was not granted any damages.
In their previous court papers, county attorneys denied the plaintiffs’ allegations.
“The reality here is that plaintiffs Adamus and Austin were transferred in 2017, in large part because they were causing severe disruption to the Assessor’s Office by repeatedly overstepping their job duties as property assessment specialists and unnecessarily impeding County Counsel’s ability to get their job done,” the county lawyers contended.
Austin, who indirectly supervised the other plaintiffs, was transferred along with Adamus to another section in 2017, but suffered no loss in pay or benefits and her chances of promotion were not affected, according to the county attorneys’ court papers.
But in their lawsuit filed in November 2019, the plaintiffs maintained that they were “pressured to unlawfully change unfavorable tax decisions they made during a taxpayer’s reassessment.”
When the three did not go along with their bosses, they were punished and effectively turned into clerks, the suit stated.
“This is the county’s dirty little secret when it comes to property taxes. It is one rule for the connected and another for the public,” plaintiffs’ attorney Gregory Smith said previously. “They threaten them, ostracized them, told them not to discuss the scheme on emails, and when they would not go along with the conspiracy, literally put one of them, a top manager, to work in a windowless room.”
Allegations of corruption have long plagued the county Assessor’s Office. Criminal charges are still pending against former Assessor John Noguez, who in 2012 was accused of taking $185,000 in bribes from a tax consultant in exchange for a reduction in property values for clients.
Prang took over two years later. The former four-time West Hollywood mayor testified during the trial.
According to the lawsuit, the Assessor’s Office has repeatedly reversed property tax decisions of connected owners, even when those residents have lost challenges with an assessment appeals board, a decision meant to be binding.
Court documents show several groups and individuals have received special treatment, including the Rand Corp., various apartment complex owners and property developers.
The suit stated the Assessor’s Office used executive referrals from county supervisors or others that circumvented the usual system of determining a property’s value and its appropriate taxes. Upon receiving an executive referral, the three employees were told to drop all of their work and complete an “exclusion, exception and/or exemption with 10 days,” they claimed.