The fine folks at Snohomish County have discovered even more omissions from the property tax rolls.

As with the previous round of error disclosures, the impact on the average property tax bill is quite modest. The bigger issue is the performance of county employees who seem to be having trouble getting the tax rolls correct. From media coverage, it seems the County Assessor and the County Council are serious about holding the right people accountable.

What gets me though, is the silly notion of spending a $130,000 to mail revised tax bills to county residents. The bill adjustments in question vary, but don't exceed about $33. The prudent choice would seem to be to simply credit property tax records accordingly, especially because many people pay their property taxes with their mortgage. Since financial institutions collecting such payments will receive corrected notices electronically no overpayment will be made by these taxpayers. Thus, the expense of mailing all property owners a revised paper statement seems particularly superfluous.

Until one considers that while the mistakes were made in the Assessor's office, the statements (and thus the corrected versions as well) come from the Treasurer's office, bearing County Treasurer Bob Dantini's signature. And Bob Dantini isn't running for County Clerk or anything. Subtle.