FOREST TAXATION IN THE UNITED STATES 89 
Copying tax rolls is reported as common practice in New York, 
and, as a result, ‘‘there has been a progressive deterioration” in the 
accuracy of property descriptions (42,p. 108). Evidence that some 
properties have not been actually revalued in 20 years has been found 
in South Dakota (19). In Massachusetts attention has been drawn 
to a farm having the same assessed value for 100 years. Many 
properties in this State have not had their assessed value changed 
for 10 or 15 years (59, pp. 97, 99). 
Failure to make the periodic reassessments as required by law is 
prevalent even in Connecticut, where the legal period between reas- 
sessments is 10 years, longer than in any other State. Not only 
individual properties but whole assessment districts have failed to 
receive this legal reassessment. With the exception of Ellington, 
Chaplin, Putnam, Naugatuck, and Norwich, all towns complied with 
the requirements of the act of the 1917 General Assembly (providing 
for general reassessment in 1920 and every 10 years thereafter) and 
had completed a general revaluation of property. The towns of 
Ellington and Putnam were (in 1921) unable to furnish the date of 
the last general revaluation, and Norwich had not had a general 
revaluation since 1880, although the officials of that town had been 
advised of the urgent need for such a general revaluation. The town 
of Chaplin had completed a general revaluation in 1915. Naugatuck 
had not had a general revaluation since 1909 (14, p. 21). 
In West Virginia 
the present system of assessing all classes of property annually has not operated 
successfully, due largely to the fact that the immense amount of detail work 
required by an annual assessment cannot be thoroughly performed in the allotted 
time. As a consequence, the assessed valuations are copied over from one year’s 
land books to the next (47, p. 158). 
In many parts of the Lake States, repeated burning of cut-over 
land has cémpletely obliterated all survey and property lines. In 
many cases even the landowners themselves cannot locate their prop- 
erty accurately enough to be sure that they are viewing their own 
land without the help of a professional surveyor. In such cases the 
assessor, with many such properties to evaluate, does not make an 
inspection of the property and has no better method of assessment 
than that of copying the previous valuation. 
When an annual assessment is required by law and is not con- 
tinuous but takes place within a few months, it is reasonable to 
suppose that the roll will be largely copied from the previous year. 
The assessor’s judgment of land values is not accurate enough to detect 
the slight changes that usually take place within a year. In making 
an annual assessment roll, the assessor realizes that he cannot justify 
a change in real estate values each year, but he tends to overlook the 
fact that the continued postponement of a change in assessed value 
soon results in an appreciable discrepancy between assessed and true 
values. In localities where property is appreciating in value, the 
desire to let sleeping dogs lie and not to arouse too much public 
interest in assessments is the excuse for copying the previous year’s 
descriptions and valuations. But in localities where land is decreasing 
in value, the practice of copying the previous year’s assessment often 
leads to a public demand for a general reassessment. 
Such a demand caused complete reassessment of farm property to 
be made in Tillamook County, Oreg., in 1927. The assessor of this 
