St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley says he believes that the county is best served by its 50-year-old system of having an appointed assessor, instead of an elected one.

Still, he's asking the County Council on Tuesday to approve his proposal to put the question to county voters on Aug. 3.

"If (an elected assessor) is what the people of St. Louis County want, that's what they ought to get," Dooley said at a news conference Monday in the council chambers.

Under Dooley's proposal, a countywide vote in favor of an elected assessor would result in an April 2011 special election to select one. An official election would be held on November 2014, and every four years thereafter.

The council will need to act within two weeks to meet the May 25 deadline for getting an issue on the Aug. 3 ballot. Otherwise, a court order will be needed -- which Dooley said shouldn't be a problem, as long as the council isn't late by more than a week or so.

Aides said later that they were confident a majority of the seven-member council would support putting the measure on the August ballot. Adding the ballot measure would incur no additional costs for the county, since Aug. 3 already is set for countywide and statewide primaries.

The county currently has an appointed assessor, as does St. Louis, Kansas City and Jackson County. "The current system we have is very professional," Dooley said.

Those assessors, especially St. Louis County's, have been under fire for decades because most assessors in the state are elected.

In fact, Dooley acknowledges that his move is, in part, to pre-empt a statewide vote this November -- already ordered by the state Legislature last year -- that calls for all assessors in the state to be elected, except for the assessor in Jackson County. (The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, exempts assessors in counties with populations between 600,000-700,000, which currently applies only to Jackson County.)

Schmitt's measure coincided with the every-two-years controversy in St. Louis County over property assessments.

But Dooley said that the state's intrusion in county affairs was inappropriate, particularly since the county -- the state's largest -- is a charter county with the power to govern itself and make its own laws. He said the statewide ballot proposal offered yet another example of how the Missouri Legislature meddles in local governments' affairs.

Dooley said the August vote was intended to allow county voters to make the decision. And if they decide to retain an appointed assessor, the county executive said he will ignore the statewide vote in November, even if those results are in favor of any elected assessor.

In a release that his staff sent out earlier, Dooley explained: “The politicians in Jefferson City have decided that the entire state of Missouri will vote in November on whether or not St. Louis County should elect its assessor. Today I’m beginning the process of placing this issue on St. Louis County’s Aug. 3 ballot. This will ensure that this decision will be made by the voters of St. Louis County and St. Louis County only. I will do all in my power to make sure that the preference of county voters is the law.”

Dooley says timing of proposal not political

Why now? Dooley denied that his action was related to his re-election bid this fall. Rather, County Chief Operating Officer Garry Earls said the urgency was prompted, in part, by the fact that county Assessor Phil Muehlheausler is currently on medical leave, and may soon retire.

Earls added that Richard Brooks is the county's acting assessor at the moment. "We don't want to hire someone permanently in that post if it might change to be an elected position, and then they lose their job," Earls said.

A bit of history:

Some property owners in the urban and suburban areas have long believed that their assessments were higher, as a percentage of their property value, because elected assessors are perceived to keep property assessments down so they can win re-election. Appointed assessors also were perceived as being under pressure to keep assessments high, and thus bring in more county revenue, because they owed their jobs to the county's top official.

The perceived disparity between Missouri's urban, suburban and rural assessments have prompted several lawsuits over the years, many of them centered on accusations that rural property assessments were artificially low, causing urban and suburban residents to pay a disproportionate share of the state's property taxes.

The implications were that urban and suburban property owners in the state's largest metropolitan areas were paying more than their share in property taxes, compared to their rural counterparts.

That assertion was at the center of a lengthy lawsuit several decades ago that claimed the region's school districts, and those in Kansas City, were being short-changed by the state's school-aid formula because of the disparity in urban, suburban and rural assessments.

At the heart of that argument was the matter of elected and appointed assessors.

There's also been the ongoing contention in St. Louis County that the assessor's office makes faulty property-value estimates, either too high or too low, depending on the portion of the county at issue. Such complaints also have generated frequent lawsuits.

Corrigan takes some credit

Dooley's chief Republican challenger, local lawyer Bill Corrigan, made an elected county assessor one of his chief campaign promises during his kickoff almost a year ago.

Dooley denied Monday that Corrigan's stance had anything to do with his latest proposal.

But that's not how Corrigan sees it. In a statement, the Republican contended:

"For the past five years, Charlie Dooley has repeatedly opposed the idea of an elected Assessor, and he’s on the record about it. Charlie has done nothing in the last eight years to fix the broken and unfair tax system.

Last year, I released my property tax reform plan to county voters that included the recommendation of an elected assessor. This announcement today from Charlie is a transparent attempt to get re-elected and voters are not going to be fooled by his election-year conversion to good government.

I’m glad to be leading this and other important efforts that mean a lot to voters.  Charlie’s lack of leadership on this and too many other issues is causing unnecessary hardship to county citizens."