While Mayor John DeStefano hung onto his seat in Tuesday’s election, his most controversial appointee is on his way out.
Bill O’Brien, the city’s embattled tax assessor, is leaving the city effective Dec. 2, announced city spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton in a press release Wednesday afternoon.
O’Brien served as tax assessor from 1999 to 2003. He returned to New Haven in 2008 after working in Bridgeport.
He became the focus of the most sustained and widespread community criticism of city government mishandling of citizen complaints. Speculation mounted in recent months that although the mayor couldn’t technically fire him without severe cause (such as breaking a law), some way would be found to push him out the door.
There was no immediate word Wednesday on if that happened.
However, the DeStefano administration announced O’Brien’s departure without having a replacement ready. A search is beginning. A deputy in the office, Roger Palmer, will run it in the meantime. In his resignation letter, O’Brien said he was moving to a new place and taking an unspecified new job elsewhere, according to this account by Abbe Smith in the Register.
Benton said in the last two years, O’Brien’s “efforts to monitor new construction, and identify and revaluate underreported and undervalued taxable property” led to a $215 million increase real property value to the city’s tax base, earning New Haven “the largest grand list growth in the state.”
Melissa Bailey Photo
O’Brien’s aggressive pursuit of tax base growth stirred up much controversy. (Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to watch an interview where O’Brien talked about the complaints against him.)
The mayor ordered top tax officials to investigate complaints made at public hearings and in a series of newspaper articles, ranging from arbitrarily inflated $5,000 assessments of artist studios and lost paperwork in the assessors office, from botched seniors’ tax bills and rising assessments on on old used cars to a complete collapse of any transparent or informed conduct by the Board of Assessment Appeals.
The mayor defended the assessor when aldermen last summer called for O’Brien to be fired. He announced a sweeping series of reforms in how the assessor’s office deals with the public.
“Good riddance,” said Wooster Square Alderman Mike Smart upon hearing the news Wednesday. Smart, who chairs the aldermanic Tax Abatement Committee, led a series of hearings designed to expose O’Brien’s alleged arbitrary and unfair practices.
“A lot of taxpayers have suffered tremendously through his abuse and his unique tactics,” Smart said.
Smart noted that O’Brien’s departure was probably in the works for a while, but was “held over until after the election.”
Smart said three to four taxpayers still show up at his committee every month to complain about how O’Brien’s office has treated them.
He said he hopes the city hires someone “reasonable” who “understands that they work for the taxpayers” and doesn’t drive businesses out of town.
“The city has an obligation to make sure people are treated fairly,” he said.