After 30 years as Santa Clara County’s assessor, Larry Stone retired in July, triggering a Nov. 4 special election to select his replacement.
Neysa Fligor is, far and away, the most qualified of the four candidates vying to lead the office responsible for setting tax values for more than 500,000 properties assessed at more than $750 billion.
Fligor, a former attorney for Santa Clara County, has represented the assessor’s office in contentious appeals over property values. Last year, after nine years in the private sector as a senior attorney for HP, she went to work for Stone serving as special assistant to the assessor and, since he retired, assistant assessor.
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Currently second in command, Fligor is responsible for the 250-person office’s day-to-day operations. including its annual assessment roll process and the office’s multi-million-dollar replacement of its 40-year-old software system. Fligor — currently also vice mayor of Los Altos and president of the Cities Association of Santa Clara County — is ready to lead. Her performance in the office has earned her the endorsement of both Stone and local unions — who often sharply disagreed.
The office of the assessor is not a typical elected position. Determining the values of properties isn’t about politics. Instead, this job requires pure adherence to the strict calculus of property assessment and the letter of state laws, including Proposition 13, California’s 1978 voter-approved tax-cutting initiative.
Moreover, Santa Clara County is not your typical county. It is home not only to the most valuable companies on the planet but also its most technologically sophisticated. Alphabet, HP, NVIDIA, Intel, Apple and Cisco, among other corporate giants, are based here. Adding to the challenge, those companies have deep pockets to appeal their assessed valuations — and many do.
Right now, $142 billion of assessed value is currently in dispute in Santa Clara County. That figure has doubled since 2019 and is now at its highest-ever level, largely a function of declining office values tied to remote work trends that have persisted since the COVID pandemic.
With 20% of the total assessed value now in dispute, nearly all of which is from businesses, the next assessor must understand litigation and be prepared to counter large corporate property owners’ armies of lawyers.
Unlike Fligor, none of her opponents have legal experience or have handled assessment appeal cases.
Yan Zhao is Fligor’s most serious opponent. The Saratoga City Council member is an electrical engineer and computer scientist with an extensive background designing and marketing chips in the semiconductor industry. She says her strong technical expertise could help her modernize the office’s assessment software and customer service system. But that software modernization is already underway; meanwhile, Zhao lacks a legal background and commercial appraisal experience.
Candidate Bryan Do is a board member of East Side Union High School District. Do says the assessor’s office’s rising values under appeal necessitate technological modernization and a startup mentality, which he claims his history as an investor and startup founder qualify him to implement. However, Do was not willing to share a resume with our editorial board and his LinkedIn profile mentions companies that have no discernible online presence.
Unlike Do, Rishi Kumar has a long history in the valley’s tech industry as a mechanical engineer and senior executive. Kumar, who refused to meet with our editorial board, has served on Saratoga’s City Council, where he did not develop a good working relationship with other council members.
Kumar has mounted three failed bids for Congress as a Democrat. Now, he is campaigning like a Howard Jarvis-style anti-tax crusader, shamelessly pandering to seniors by promising to work toward exempting them from property taxes — something far beyond the authority of the assessor’s office.
Fortunately, Santa Clara County voters have a solid choice to replace Stone. Without reservation, we endorse Fligor.