Missouri State Auditor escalates battle over data on 2023 Jackson County property inspections
JACKSON COUNTY, Mo. (KCTV) - On Wednesday, the Missouri State Auditor filed a court petition to enforce subpoenas for the Jackson County Assessor and its vendor, Data Cloud Solutions, to try and get information relating to the 2023 assessments.
Petition Filed by KCTV5 on Scribd
The Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick and his office have been conducting an audit into the Jackson County Assessment Department since October 2023, after the Jackson County Legislature authorized the audit in that August.
In December 2023, his office released a preliminary audit stating that the Jackson Assessment Department failed to comply with state law, and property values that increased more than 15% are likely invalid.
Since then, it has been a struggle for the State Auditor’s Office to access vital information for the audit. KCTV5 Investigates spoke with Fitzpatrick earlier this year after they filed two subpoenas to the Jackson County Assessor and Data Cloud Solutions (DCS).
Fitzpatrick said the data they need is to determine if drive-by inspections occurred, which is against state law.
“The Data Cloud Solutions information is going to give us more data on exactly when the inspections occurred, how long they were, and how much time had ed from one inspection until the next inspection and that will give us the indication of how they were going about conducting the inspections,” said Fitzpatrick. “I think that it is certainly a concern that the county cannot either produce themselves or require their vendor to produce this data that s that they did their job.”
He said they have not gotten a lot of cooperation from the County or DCS for months. They hope this court order will change that.
“This is one of a very small number of things or loose ends that need to be tied up to get this thing completed, and so we decided to go ahead to proceed with pursuing it through the court as opposed to giving up on the objective,” said Fitzpatrick. “What we are focused on is making sure that the failures of the 2023 assessments, even though we are now in the 2025 assessment, the failures of the 2023 assessment A. are documented and B. are well known to everybody involved so they aren’t able to easily happen again.”
KCTV5 Investigates reached out to the County and Data Cloud Solutions for comment on this story, but did not hear back.
Fitzpatrick said that due to the delay with this information, they are looking at releasing multiple reports for the audit. He is hopeful to have the first report later this summer.
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