In This Issue

THE SAN FRANCISCO Assessor's Office hasn't traditionally been known as the home of honest, crusading progressives. The way the story goes, Russell L. Wolden, who was assessor in the 1950s and 1960s, used to hang up his clothes outside the steam room in the Olympic Club and find his pockets filled with bribes when he returned. In three years – 1964, '65, and '66 – he cost the city $11 million (the equivalent of $66 million today) by systematically underassessing property. As the Bay Guardian reported at the time (see "Guilty Firms Wriggle on Taxes," 4/20/67) it took an order from the state appeals court to force the city to go after the money.

And even then, as we noted, while the legal hammer came down on Wolden, "none of the lofty corporations which for years paid less than their fair share of taxes have been brought to the bar of justice."

Doris Ward, who was assessor through much of the 1990s, caught a lot of flack for underappraising property during the boom years and was drummed out of office in 2002. But the big companies that took advantage of Ward were never penalized in any way.

And they're back.

As Steven T. Jones and Tali Woodward report on pages 16 and 18, respectively, with San Francisco facing one of the worst budget deficits in modern history, many of the city's biggest property owners are pushing for huge property tax cuts. In some cases, the reductions sound crazy – can the Bank of America building really have lost half its value in just two years? – but there's more to the story.

Almost every one of these large landlords has made a killing in the San Francisco real estate market. They made gobs of money during the dot-com boom years on astronomical rents. They own property in a city where the real estate market always recovers, always goes up, and always turns out well for the owners of big downtown buildings.

For years these folks have paid artificially low taxes, thanks to Proposition 13. In most cases, the companies that own these buildings (and the individuals who run those companies) have done quite well on their own, thanks to state and federal tax cuts.

And now, when times are temporarily tough and the city really needs the cash, these greedheads are demanding even more money back.

The city should fight them for every dime.