In Philadelphia, The Inquirer found 9,000 properties that haven't been reappraised in at least two decades.
But like Maryland, King County was not always a model system.
Rich Medved, the county's deputy assessor, recalled a chief assessor from more than two decades ago who "had family members working for him."
"He would make deals where certain developers were getting better treatment than others," Medved said.
After a public clamor, the assessor was ousted.
Even Chicago has cleaned up its appraisal system.
Twenty years ago, it was known as "the Bank of the Democratic Party," where appraisers were reputed to hike assessments on valuable properties, forcing the owners to hire politically connected lawyers to get the assessments lowered. In turn, those lawyers were expected to make political contributions to the party.
"It's changed," said Richard Almy, a national consultant on real estate taxation. "Now, with the big downtown office buildings, they just go public with a lot of details about assessment."
It took lawsuits and scandals to create the public pressure necessary to clean up property assessments in Maryland, Chicago, and King County. Now it might just be Philadelphia's turn.
"It does take something big to change the system," Ceisler said. "I think we have that here now. I think everybody agrees there needs to be change."
Contact staff writer Patrick Kerkstra at 215-854-2827 or pkerkstra@phillynews.com.
