Fighting to keep his professional appraiser's license, Fulton County assessors board member Donald Johnson had two assessors office employees testify on his behalf in administrative law court Wednesday -- while both were on the clock.
They brought documents supporting Johnson's defense that were generated with county computers, and one of them testified she helped compile the information on county time.
An attorney for the Real Estate Commission and Appraisers Board, which has moved to revoke Johnson's license to appraise residential real estate in Georgia, questioned whether their testimony could be believed, since a board member could hold sway over their jobs. Both workers denied being pressured, noting they were testifying under subpoena.
"All of it seems awfully shady," Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation Executive Director Barbara Payne said. "It points to a conflict of interest, which seems to be rampant in Atlanta and Fulton County."
When Johnson was asked outside the courtroom if using county resources to defend his license creates a conflict, his attorney, Ted Lackland, answered for him, saying he enlisted them because their testimony is crucial to his case. His client's seat on the board isn't an issue, he said, since Johnson has no direct authority to fire the staffers.
"Subject to a subpoena, they must honor the subpoena or suffer the consequences," Lackland said.
Johnson is one of five assessors appointed by the County Commission, charged with deciding the fair market values of homes, businesses and land lots to determine how much taxpayers get billed.
He's also a self-employed appraiser based in south Fulton, and the state has accused him of incompetence, negligence and falsifying documents in several appraisals for private clients.
The state contends he overvalued three quadruplexes on Hollywood Road and a townhouse on Moreland Avenue, all in Atlanta's hotbed areas for mortgage fraud during the height of the housing bubble from 2005 to 2007.
Appraisals must cite sale prices of nearby, similar properties, and Johnson is accused of using selective sales -- many of them inflated -- to boost values. In one case, the state contends, he set a quadruplex's value at $345,000, ignoring nearby sales of $162,500 and using data provided by the mortgage company and a closing attorney.
In another case, he reported that a property hadn't been sold within the past year, even though the owner had bought it 14 days earlier and was already trying to refinance.
A major part of Johnson's defense, it was revealed Wednesday, is that many of the sales the state says he should have referenced weren't yet available to the public on the Web.
Two assessors office workers -- manager Blair White and administrator Michelle Smith -- testified that back then sales took months, sometimes years, to be keyed into the system, then months more before they showed up on the Web.
Johnson spent hours on the witness stand himself Wednesday. He described doing about a dozen quadruplex appraisals in the Heather Glen subdivision, and how he made efforts for his appraisal to match the pending sale price without seeing the actual contract.
Repeat appraisal business from a single client is restricted now under new federal regulations requiring appraisers to be selected at random.
"The re-gentrification was taking place," Johnson testified about a Hollywood Road appraisal. "I felt like $350,000 was more in line with the value."
Others in the industry are skeptical about that part of the city, considered a high-crime area.
"Trust me," said Henry Lorber, a real estate and finance expert with Hays Financial Consulting, "there's no way that a unit on Hollywood was worth anywhere near $350,000, even at the top of the frenzy of the market."
Testimony likely will conclude in another hearing to be scheduled within the next month, after which Judge Ana Kennedy will have 30 days to make a decision.
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