The Pima County treasurer and assessor have been locked in a behind-the-scenes dispute over $5.8 million in property tax corrections that could ripple through school districts, fire districts, water providers and county government itself.
County Treasurer Brian Johnson says Assessor Suzanne Droubie didn’t follow state law and he won’t process refunds for more than 600 property owners.1
At issue is not whether the properties were valued incorrectly years ago, but whether the assessor has the legal authority to go back and correct those values in the way she did.
Those refunds — which include an additional $800,000 in interest owed — could eat into the budgets of everybody from a water district in Marana to school districts to Pima County itself, while potentially setting the stage for a legal battle involving county government and property owners.
The problem at the root of the dispute is really complicated, but it boils down to the way some properties are valued.
For a long time, former Assessor Bill Staples used a cost data system supplied by the Arizona Department of Revenue to figure out how much properties were worth and how much tax was owed on them. Staples started the move to a new system in 2019, and Droubie inherited the new system when she took office in 2021.
The transition to using industry-standard CoreLogic/Marshall & Swift software took several years and wrapped up the reassessment of nearly a half-million properties earlier this year.
By her analysis, the “majority of cost-valued properties in the county had been undervalued,” Droubie wrote to the Board of Supervisors in February.
But roughly 600 properties were overvalued, and she thinks the taxpayers are owed refunds. She outlined in a memo $5.8 million in refunds owed to property owners, plus another roughly $800,000 in interest.
While undervaluations don’t turn into revised bills, overvaluations require the county to issue refunds for up to four years.
Droubie’s memo triggered a flurry of letters to school districts, Pima Community College, the cities of Tucson and South Tucson, multiple fire districts and the Ajo Health District.
Each body would have to shoulder the cost of the refunds, which range from $257 for the Marana Domestic Water Improvement District to $1.3 million for Tucson Unified School District.
The county’s burden is even larger: $2.3 million in refunds.
Here are some of the other agencies taking the biggest hits:
Pima Community College — $554,374
Amphitheater School District — $357,264
Marana Unified School District — $178,660
Flowing Wells School District — $115,187
Sunnyside School District — $113,102
Droubie’s memo piqued Johnson’s interest and he began to dig into how she came up with those numbers.
While the assessor's office is responsible for determining the taxable value of property each year, the treasurer's office is responsible for collecting taxes and issuing refunds when appropriate.
After doing his own analysis of the roughly 600 properties with help from a former county assessor employee he hired, Johnson said he wasn’t going to process the $5.8 million in refunds.
Early last month, Johnson wrote a 27-page memo to the Board of Supervisors arguing that Droubie did not “use any standard appraisal methods and techniques” when it came to assigning values to those 632 properties.
Droubie told us the new software used by her department flagged the properties as being overvalued.
Johnson also alerted the Arizona Department of Revenue to what he saw as a flaw in Droubie’s new valuation method last month and asked ADOR officials to intervene.2
For now, ADOR doesn’t believe it has any role in the dispute between county officials, Sophia Solis, the senior director for communications and stakeholder relations for the Arizona Department of Revenue, told us.
“At this time, the letter does not require a formal response or intervention from ADOR, as our direct involvement in these county-level administrative matters is limited,” Solis said.
Meanwhile, Droubie told us valuation methods are more complicated than they appear from the outside.
“It's not easy to know the nuances of what we do here. So it is very complicated,” Droubie said. “I've been doing this for 28 years. I make sure that I'm always doing everything very transparently, fairly and equitably to all taxpayers, regardless of who they are. I make sure nobody pays too much, nobody pays too little.”
She washed her hands of Johnson’s concerns. Kind of.
“We've done our part of the process and so now we're done. And now it sits in the hands of the treasurer,” Droubie said. “The only responsibility he has is to cut the checks to those people that are deserving of a refund.”
With ADOR bowing out of the dispute, officials told us that the Pima County Attorney’s Office had been asked to review the conflict and issue a legal opinion.
A decision was expected on Friday, but officials told us the opinion is confidential.
Whether PCAO sides with the assessor, the treasurer or conflicts itself out — as it did with the fight between the supervisors and Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos — is anybody’s guess.
If the PCAO decides to sit it out, both county row officers will need to get their own attorneys to represent themselves.
On Monday, Johnson told us that he’s still sticking to his guns. He told us absent a court order or intervention from ADOR, he isn’t issuing the refunds.
We are pretty sure we heard Gov. Katie Hobbs’ first official 2026 campaign stump speech at Saturday night’s Udall Dinner.
The governor spent about 12 minutes addressing around 200 Democrats at the biggest annual fundraiser for the Pima County Democratic Party, and she focused heavily on the guy she thinks will win the Republican gubernatorial primary, Andy Biggs.
Noting Biggs is supported by President Donald Trump and calling him “one of the most extreme MAGA politicians in the entire country,” Hobbs delivered a comparison of their respective records on healthcare.
“As president of the Arizona Senate, Andy Biggs fought tooth and nail to stop Medicaid expansion,” Hobbs told the crowd. “Now in Congress, Biggs is still trying to repeal the ACA and earlier this year, voted to end the ACA tax credits, raising costs for nearly 400,000 Arizonans.”
Hobbs touted her successes in paying off medical debt for nearly half a million people across the state, lowering prescription drug costs and expanding access to healthcare during her first term in office.
The healthcare-centric stump speech comes as an estimated 422,000 Arizonans are expected to lose their health insurance due to sweeping changes from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Which, of course, Biggs voted for.
Boosting one of the five C’s: Congressman Juan Ciscomani brought Trump administration officials to Marana last week to announce the Great American Cotton Plan, Jim Nintzel reports for the Tucson Sentinel. The goal is to sell cotton in additional foreign markets, while providing farmers with crop insurance and other federal subsidies. Cotton — including the Pima cotton that’s grown in Arizona — took a hit when President Donald Trump imposed an array of tariffs during his first and second terms, and countries like China limited their cotton imports. At the same time, the Colorado River has been struggling, and cotton farmers are worried about cuts to their water supplies.
Stick with him or cut ties?: State Rep. Alma Hernandez threw down the gauntlet for local officials who endorsed her opponent in the Legislative District 20 Senate race. The Republic recently reported on social media posts by her Democratic opponent, former Tucson City Councilman Rocque Perez (who says he was endorsed by five members of the council), that included saying Ivanka Trump should be thrown off the Capitol building roof and urging a Twitter user who was complaining about conservative relatives to “kill them, do your duty baby girl.” As far as we can tell, nobody has rescinded their endorsements.
Small-town roundup: It’s budget time for the Oro Valley Town Council as the $128 million spending package for next fiscal year and a water rate hike come up for a vote this week, and the Santa Cruz County manager is going to make nearly $200,000 a year, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes in his roundup of local government meetings.
Hitting home: A project to build a bikeway near Bisbee could get derailed by high gas prices, Tony Paniagua reports for Arizona Public Media. Meggen Connolley was working with city and state officials — and raising millions of dollars — to establish a shared-use section of Highway 80 around the Lavender Pit mine, but the war in Iran drove up the price of construction by $1 million since an estimate in December.
A breath of fresh air: Pima County kids are bringing their poetry to the public through the Golden Hour showcase, which builds on Indigenous oral storytelling traditions, Noor Haghighi reports for AZPM. The crew of young poets includes Tomi Marcus, who wrote the poem “Class Clown,” and Rosemary Burton, a home-schooled student, who read her poem “The Desert Life” last week at the Richard Elías-Mission Library.
“I was nervous before, but when I got up there, I felt a little better,” Rosemary said while munching on a sprinkled donut after the show.
Well, we’re guessing someone at the Marana Chamber of Commerce is pissed at a new billboard that recently went up.
Pima Resists ICE (PRICE) has put a big billboard in Marana that reads “Marana, AZ. You could be 10 minutes from an ICE detention center. Welcome home.”
The billboard is right off of Interstate 10 in Marana.
This is just the latest billboard used for political messaging here in the Old Pueblo.
Veterans for Peace put up one thanking Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly earlier this year, and activists sarcastically thanked DOGE last year for reduced hours at Saguaro National Park.
1 Full disclosure: Joe worked for Droubie for 16 months in the Assessor’s Office, ending in 2022.
2 For the real wonks, Johnson claims “the Assessor’s actions deviate from, and do not comply with, statutory requirements under Arizona Revised Statutes Title 42, including but not limited to A.R.S. § 42-11001, 42-16251, 42-16252, 42-16256, 42-16257, and 42-13301-13302.