The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office said no changes or new appointments have been made to the agency’s assessors appointed by former Sheriff Stanley Glanz, who called his appointments “political patronage” before leaving office.
It’s been eight months since the Tulsa World first reported friends and family of Glanz had earned up to $51,000 per year for the equivalent of one day of work per week appraising foreclosed property.
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Justin Green said Undersheriff Rick Weigel, who has held the office since Glanz’s departure in September has made no changes to the appraiser staff and doesn’t plan to before an April special election to select a new sheriff.
“The decision to revise, amend or change the appraisers will be reserved for the new sheriff,” Green said.
Marq Lewis, an activist who led a petition for Glanz to leave office, said changes to the appraisers program were one of the recommendations made to the sheriff’s office. Lewis said he is not surprised no changes have been made.
“At least send those people to some kind of training,” Lewis said. “But that has not occurred. There’s going to have to be some kind of legislation to change it.”
In total, appraisers appointed by Glanz had earned millions since 2009, according to the source’s database compiled from Tulsa County District Court records. The practice, which is legal and unregulated, is widespread among Oklahoma counties, according to the database that looked at money paid for appraisals in Oklahoma’s seven most populated counties from 2014 to 2015.
Each appraiser in Tulsa County nets $99 per appraisal, with dozens sometimes occurring in a day, according to court records. The fees are not paid with taxpayer dollars but are paid in the foreclosure process.