Gualala River – Appraising Parkland

Report: California taxpayers may be getting fleeced by unreliable system to appraise sales price for park and open space land

by Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News, October 23, 2007

[excerpt:] California voters have approved spending billions of dollars to buy new parks, wildlife refuges and open space preserves in recent years.

Yet taxpayers may be getting fleeced because state agencies do not have a reliable system to figure out the fair market value of lands they are buying.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the state’s non-partisan watchdog agency, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Echoing the findings of Mercury News stories published over the last five years, the agency, known as the LAO, concluded the Department of Fish and Game and other agencies keep too many documents secret when they buy land and do not have consistent standards to ensure the public is paying reasonable prices…

To read the entire article, visit the: San Jose Mercury News website Read the full LAO report: Improving the Appraisal Function in Resources Land Acquisitions, prepared by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

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