Sunday, May 14, 2000

County Computer System Fails to Distribute Funds

By Isabel Sanchez Journal Staff Writer A $4.5 million software package that is supposed to streamline how the county takes in property taxes and distributes the money is only doing half its job. The "integrated assessment system" can handle collections, Treasurer Daniel L. Aragon said  it can take, but it is having trouble giving. "We have the money. We just can't manipulate it," he said. Property tax revenue is distributed by the county to more than a dozen entities, such as the Albuquerque school district, the city and Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute. The new software won't allow distributions to be made correctly. In some cases, it won't process refunds or send out amended tax bills. "It's just really frustrating," Aragon said. The system was purchased two years ago from Cole-Layer-Trumble Co. in Dayton, Ohio. It is supposed to integrate information from the offices of the assessor, clerk and treasurer, and departments such as zoning  everything having to do with property ownership and appraisal. A further incentive to invest in the software was that the county's current system wasn't Y2K compliant.

The Assessor's Office hasn't had major problems with it, but Aragon said his agency has had daily conference calls for months with CLT as the company attempts to make fixes. Property tax money the county collects  $155 million for the first half of 1999  is shared with about 14 entities. Once they are paid, they return three-quarters of a percent of the amount, as a fee to help pay for the collection process. The new software keeps the three-quarters percent upfront. Sometimes when people overpay their taxes by mistake, their refunds can't be processed. "It gets confused when you ask it to give payments back," Aragon said. "It doesn't want to let the money go."

CLT president Bruce Nagel, in Albuquerque on Thursday to meet with county officials, said his company is sending a team to work with the software and he is hopeful the most critical issues can be resolved by the end of next week. The software's "underlying architecture" resembles the software designed for other states, but many New Mexico laws, such as tax liability when there is a lien on property, are different and software has to be modified. Bernalillo County is one of the first local governments using the new IAS software. "We underestimated how much we had to do to make it work," he said. Until the system is fixed, Albuquerque Public Schools, the city and others are getting paid based on what they received last year. The extra money owed is safe, secure and earning interest, Aragon said.

Elsewhere in his department, employees are going over some 5,100 amended tax bills by hand, checking to make certain the numbers match those changed by the Assessor's Office. "The real answer is not doing it manually," Aragon said. "We depend on our automation. We need our automation. Without it, we can't do our jobs."

http://www.abqjournal.com/news/31085news05-14-00.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 14, 2000