Hughes County District Attorney Erik Johnson asked Amber Jones, the county’s assessor since 2019, to resign after officials found only 1 percent of properties in the county had tax assessments completed in 2024. Jones resigned Nov. 21 after the Oklahoma Tax Commission recommended unprecedented sanctions be placed on the county.
Johnson said State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd, secretary of the State Board of Equalization and chairwoman of the board’s performance audit subcommittee, alerted him to the information.
The board adjusts and equalizes the valuation of real and personal property in Oklahoma’s counties.
According to information from the OTC, Hughes County’s valuation issues have worsened for years. Residential and commercial property values have steadily fallen out of alignment with actual market conditions, with a report from the OTC finding “the county’s residential and commercial real estate values have been steadily dropping in relationship to the county’s real estate market” since 2020. The county has failed its state board-directed annual performance audits since 2022. Inspection rates also dropped, with inspectors reviewing only 24 percent of assigned properties in 2023 and just 1 percent in 2024.
The county entered a memorandum of understanding with the OTC on April 2 outlining tasks the county was required to complete by November 2025. But Jones’ office completed only two tasks — inspecting current-year properties and training staff. Four major requirements remain unfinished, including catching up on past-due inspections, contracting with a third party for inspection assistance, applying International Association of Assessing Officers sales standards, and correcting land values to reflect fair market conditions.
In response, the OTC submitted a noncompliance recommendation to the performance audit subcommittee, which voted Nov. 24 to approve the recommendation and allow Byrd to present the audit to the equalization board Monday, Dec. 1. If the board approves the noncompliance recommendation, Hughes County would move from Category 2 to Category 3 noncompliance, the first time a county has been in the designation since its creation in 1992.
OTC uses the three-tier system to categorize noncompliance severity. Category 1 represents minor issues requiring the OTC to inform the county of its noncompliance and what steps it may take to correct it. Category 2 allows the commission to order corrective steps, impose deadlines, or require procedural changes. Category 3 applies to counties that fail to follow state statutes or administrative rules governing property valuation, including the requirement that assessors annually value all taxable real and personal property.
“Category 3 allows the OTC to directly supervise the county valuation function and includes providing regular reports to the county commissioners and the withholding of the county assessor’s salary until the OTC certifies to the county commissioners that the noncompliance has been corrected,” the OTC noncompliance recommendation said.
Johnson, the district attorney, said the conduct of Jones’ office has raised several red flags.
“As I can speak right now, [Hughes County] didn’t inspect all of the previous year’s assigned real estate properties that the tax commission wanted us to inspect,” Johnson said. “We have not contracted with a third-party to assist with inspections, which is very unusual. (…) It just makes an appearance like it was a slipshod assessment of real property, which has a direct negative impact on all of those entities that are dependent upon ad valorem property taxes, including our schools and our county operations.”
Jones was first elected assessor in 2018 and ran unopposed in 2022.
Johnson said he received the information from Byrd on Nov. 20 and met with Jones the next day.
“I told her that she wasn’t doing her job, she knows she wasn’t doing her job and she needs to resign or else I’m going to initiate removal proceedings,” Johnson said. “I’d already coordinated with the Attorney General’s Office and the State Auditor’s Office, so she didn’t have a lot of cards to play.”
Johnson said he had a resignation form prepared for Jones to sign and that she “tendered it back a couple of hours later.”
Attorney Irvin Box represents Jones.
“I just thought it was in her best interest at this point in time to probably resign and proceed on,” Box said.
Johnson said his office is still gathering information on what transpired, as the matter is moving “fairly quickly.” He hopes to gain a fuller understanding of the situation once a representative from OTC is appointed to oversee the assessor’s office for as long as it remains in Category 3.
“We’re going to have to figure out where exactly we stand as far as the statutory duties of our assessor and that office,” Johnson said. “We have to make a determination of where they are currently and move them to where they’re in compliance with state law.”
