Charged with setting property tax values in a hotbed of taxpayer revolt, Fulton County Chief Appraiser Burt Manning got used to being vilified.
But even the thickest of skins has limits. On Valentine's Day, Manning will call it quits, leaving two months earlier than planned to start a new job with the state Revenue Department.
"The job has eaten up some people," Manning said last week, "and I don't want to get to that point where I let it happen to me."
For nearly six years Manning held a position with huge impact on how much Fulton residents pay in taxes for schools, police, fire protection, libraries, court systems and roadwork. The county commission, city councils and school boards set tax rates, but it's the chief appraiser and his staff who set property values -- the most critical, most disputed multiplier on tax bills.
Tuesday marks the end a tumultuous run, intensified by the Great Recession's real estate collapse, which left Atlanta facing an unprecedented foreclosure crisis and rampant mortgage fraud.
The state Legislature enacted tough reforms designed to force assessors to keep up with nosediving property values, and Fulton -- juggling a quarter more parcels than second-place Gwinnett County and dealing with a surge in appeals -- often struggled to comply.
Over the past few years a series of errors and glitches meant Manning's office frequently was accused of incompetence by residents and taxpayer advocates.
"When we were behind the curve when [values] were going up, nobody gave us a problem," he said. "In a lot of ways, it's a little bit of a thankless job, but it's very important to the county, the cities and the school boards, because the integrity of the digest is what they base their tax collections on."
Board of Assessors Chairman Bill Huff said Manning did an excellent job, turning around a department that was in disarray when he took over. Manning declined offers to stay on longer, he said.
"It's tremendous pressure," Huff said. "It was visible that it was having an impact on him."
Even some of Manning's harshest critics said they sympathize.
"It's very difficult for me to rate him," tax activist R.J. Morris said, "because I've always said that I believe he is an ethical man caught in an unethical situation."
Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation Executive Director Barbara Payne said she rates Manning a C-minus.
"The department didn't sink like the Titanic while he was around, true enough," she said. "But the mistakes coming out of the office cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars."
In 2006, Manning took over a department mired in turmoil. Two separate audits had declared the office so inept and mismanaged that its numbers couldn't be trusted. Three Board of Assessors members resigned, and the board removed then-Chief Appraiser Rosalind Ray.
Manning was expected to restore public trust in the county's tax bills. A reminder of those days still hangs on his office wall -- a 2008 plaque from the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation thanking him for his "efforts to reform property taxes."
But no sooner had Manning turned the ship around than it was overcome by a perfect storm. With the real estate bust, the state's property tax system imploded as values plummeted to historic lows.
County appraisers failed to adjust accordingly, brought to light in a 2009 series published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, then in follow-up series in 2010 and 2011.
Fulton tended to fare better than other counties in the AJC's analyses. In 2010, the typical appraisal was 2.6 percent less than the home's actual value. In 2011, the typical home was found to be assessed 7 percent too high, based on a comparison of 2011 tax values and first-quarter 2011 sales -- compared with 16 percent too high in Gwinnett, 13 percent too high in Cobb County and 10 percent too high in DeKalb County.
Most of the recent trouble Manning's office encountered had to do with Senate Bill 246, a sweeping tax system overhaul.
Tax bill estimates were required to be sent to every taxpayer under the new law. In 2011, the notices sent by the county to about 136,000 Atlanta property owners were overblown. The errors were attributed to a computer glitch and careless staff. Overall, the county wound up remailing 230,000 assessment notices to correct erroneous and omitted information, costing an estimated $140,000.
Stan Anderson, who helps taxpayers appeal their assessments as president of Anderson Real Estate Services, said he wishes Manning had done more to adjust the culture in the assessors office. Despite the market's continuing slide, county appraisers stubbornly insist values are correct when residents protest, he said.
"The Fulton County [chief appraiser] job is just almost an impossible job, because the situation is just so far out of whack," Anderson said. "Fulton County just has so many parcels, and there are so many in disarray."
But Huff, part of the board that took over after the 2006 upheaval, points to the county's 7 percent-high sales ratio, which is well within the Revenue Department's standard of no more than 10 percent overvalued or 10 percent undervalued.
"I'm real proud of what Burt and his staff have done," Huff said.
Burt Manning
Age: 66
Residence: Sugar Hill
Family: Wife Sharon; five daughters; 10 grandchildren
Current post: Fulton County chief appraiser (until Tuesday). Oversees a department with a $13.5 million budget and a staff of 156. The office sets values for 342,500 properties in a tax digest worth $132 billion, then fields taxpayers' value disputes in the first level of the appeals process.
New job: Georgia Department of Revenue development and training specialist, responsible for training appraisers, assessors board members and tax commissioners throughout the state.
Years of experience: 40. He came to Fulton in mid-2006 from DeKalb County, where he was working as an assistant chief appraiser. He also worked in Clayton, Glynn, Chatham and McIntosh counties.
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