The Tarrant Appraisal District board won’t fire the official responsible for a significant error related to the agency’s 2024 board election, the directors determined Monday.
After a monthlong investigation into the incident revealed no new information, chief appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt now faces three corrective actions the board voted on Dec. 1. Bobbitt, who made the error last year while distributing voting power among taxing entities, is hired by the appraisal board and was responsible for verifying the share of votes.
Bobbitt has not returned requests for comment from the Fort Worth Report.
Each year, the county’s taxing entities — including the county, cities, school districts and others — vote to fill five of the nine-member appraisal district board seats. Those entities have voting power based on their share of the appraisal district’s taxing revenue. The more tax revenue an entity produces, the more votes it has.
In 2024, Tarrant County College cast 505 votes, about 200 more than it was entitled to, officials have said. This meant other entities, including Fort Worth and Tarrant County, didn’t have the voting power they should have.
The timing of the investigation into Bobbitt’s error aligned “interestingly” with his annual review, which is conducted by the appraisal board, said appraisal board chairman and tax assessor Rick Barnes.
The board conducted the annual review on Monday — the same day that the investigation’s findings were discussed — during a three-hour, closed-door executive session. As of Monday afternoon, the notes for Bobbitt’s evaluation are still being written, Barnes said.
“We took the information from the conversations we’ve been having from the 2024 election and included them as part of the annual review,” Barnes said.
In Bobbitt’s annual review, the board determined that he did not adequately communicate to directors or to the public information regarding the error; he failed to manage district staff sufficiently to prevent the error; and he failed to prioritize “time and efforts to certain important matters,” Barnes said.
Moving forward, Bobbitt must promptly inform board members of any serious appraisal district matters; improve employee oversight and training; and prioritize time and efforts to ensure direct involvement in all tax code matters.
State law gives the appraisal district board election responsibility solely to the chief appraiser, Barnes noted.
“So when we had a problem in the ’24 election, if 100% of responsibility is for the chief appraiser, then 100% of responsibility lies with the chief appraiser for mistakes as well,” he said.
Board member Callie Rigney called for Bobbitt’s immediate removal — a motion she also made Nov. 3 when the error was first discussed during an appraisal district meeting — but her motion Monday was not seconded. She then voted with the rest of the board to approve the annual review that included the corrective actions.
Chief appraiser’s typo incorrectly split up voting power
Tarrant County College’s uptick in voting power was questioned by TCC officials and residents last year. Appraisal board officials defended the numbers at the time saying that they were the result of taxing conditions.
The error fully came to light in mid-October when Colleyville resident Sayeda Syed, a current board nominee who unsuccessfully tried to win a board seat in 2024, discovered the miscalculation and brought it up at Arlington ISD and Tarrant County College public meetings.
Shortly after Syed brought the error to the public eye, she met with Barnes to discuss it, she said. Barnes later publicly decried the error and called for the board’s response.
“We can’t reverse it,” Syed previously told the Report. “But we can take some corrective actions.”
Syed previously said she wants the appraisal district to write a letter of apology to each taxing entity, explaining the error and the correct amount of votes each has moving forward. She wants to see the 2024 election’s official results adjusted to account for the error.
At the Nov. 3 meeting discussing the error, Bobbitt said he made the mistake after copying and pasting the tax revenue of each entity — a standard procedure to verify and distribute the appropriate share of votes. He accidentally gave TCC the tax revenue of the Tarrant Hospital District because the hospital district appeared on the spreadsheet adjacent to the college. The hospital district lacks voting power in appraisal district elections.
“I didn’t check that as closely as I should have,” Bobbitt said last month.
What does a Tarrant Appraisal District board member do?
The board’s primary duties are to select the chief appraiser, adopt the annual budget and ensure the district follows policies and procedures set by law. The board does not appraise property or make decisions that affect the appraisal records for particular properties. Board members are not paid.
TCC ultimately gave 75 votes to Gloria Peña, 141 to Alan Blaylock and 289 to Wendy Burgess.
The 2024 election put Blaylock, Burgess, Peña, Michael Alfred and Fred Campos on the board.
While state law spells out the election process for such appraisal boards, it does not detail how to respond to an error such as this.
On Oct. 27, Blaylock, who also sits on Fort Worth City Council, announced his impending resignation from the board as he runs for the Texas House.
Taxing entities will nominate names to fill the vacant seat. Barnes said the board will meet in late December to elect Blaylock’s successor from the list of entities’ nominees.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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