Editorial Policy

1. Our Editorial Mission

Ohio’s county-auditor system is unusual in its breadth — fiscal officer, assessor, payroll officer, weights-and-measures regulator, vendor’s-license issuer, dog-license issuer, manufactured-home registrar, Board of Revision secretary, Budget Commission secretary — and each of Ohio’s 88 county auditors runs the office a little differently. Add the Ohio Auditor of State (a separate constitutional officer for actual audits), the Ohio Department of Taxation (state-level property-tax oversight), the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals (BTA), and the Ohio Department of Agriculture (weights-and-measures policy), and finding the right office for any given Ohioan question becomes a research project on its own.

Our editorial mission is to publish practical, step-by-step walkthroughs — manually verified against the live portal — for every Ohio county auditor and the related state offices. The reader leaves a county page knowing the auditor’s portal URL, how to run a property search, when the next Board of Revision filing window opens, what DTE form to use, and where to escalate if the county isn’t responding.

2. Quality Standards Every Page Meets

• The county auditor’s official portal URL is verified live, with the current auditor’s name and term
• The property search / GIS portal is tested with a sample search and the field labels described from the actual interface
• The property tax estimator is linked, with notes on how its output compares with the county treasurer’s actual tax bill
• The triennial-update / sexennial-reappraisal cycle position is identified for the county
• The Board of Revision filing procedure is described with the current DTE 1 form revision and the January 1 – March 31 statutory window under ORC §5715.19
• The Homestead Exemption application procedure is described with current DTE 105A / 105G / 105I forms
• The CAUV (Current Agricultural Use Value) application procedure is described where applicable
• “Last reviewed” date appears on every page
• FCRA non-CRA position is reachable from every page

3. Source Hierarchy — Six Tiers

Full hierarchy with named sources, URLs, and how each is used is on the Sources & Methodology page.

4. Verification — Our Seven-Step Process

1. Identify the right authoritative source. We start with the county auditor’s own website, cross-checked against the CAAO member directory and the Ohio Auditor of State’s office.
2. Verify the URL is current. County auditor portals get redesigned and migrated. We click through every link before publication and confirm the destination is the actual page.
3. Run a sample search and review the actual interface. Walkthroughs are written from a real lookup against a sample parcel — fields, error messages, and the verification page layout described from on-screen.
4. Document the steps from the actual interface. Field names and button text are quoted verbatim where we describe them.
5. Cross-check the legal framework. For procedures governed by statute, we cite the Ohio Revised Code section (ORC §319 county auditor; §323 property tax; §5713 valuation; §5715 boards of revision; §5739 sales tax; §149.43 public records; §121.22 open meetings).
6. Note current procedural details, fees, deadlines, and form numbers. Captured with a “last reviewed” date and re-verified each quarter.
7. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews the page end-to-end before it goes live, including a fresh check on the named auditor — county auditors are elected to four-year terms and the office can change at any general election.

5. Update Cycles

6. Corrections Process

1. You report it. Email info@ohioauditors.org with subject “Correction” and the page URL.
2. We acknowledge. Response within seven business days confirms receipt.
3. We verify. An editor goes back to the official source and confirms the current position with a fresh sample search.
4. We correct. If confirmed, the page is updated. Substantive corrections — wrong URL, wrong auditor, wrong deadline — trigger a published correction note dated and described in plain English.
5. We tell you. The reporter is notified once the correction is live.

7. FCRA Editorial Policy

8. AI Tools and Authorship

• AI tools may be used for first drafts, summarization of agency pages, formatting consistency, and language polish
• Every county walkthrough is run against the live portal by a human editor before publication — AI cannot substitute for live verification
• Portal URLs, auditor names, statute citations, DTE form numbers, and procedures are confirmed against the official page by a human
• AI-generated text that turns out to misstate a procedure is corrected through the standard corrections process
• We do not allow AI to invent county-specific procedures, fabricate statute citations, or describe officials who don’t exist

9. Editorial Independence

We do not take payment from any Ohio county auditor’s office, the Ohio Auditor of State, the Ohio Department of Taxation, the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals, the County Auditors’ Association of Ohio (CAAO), or any Ohio county or municipal government in exchange for editorial coverage. We do not take payment from any commercial property-tax-appeal service, appraiser, vendor’s-license filer, or other commercial provider in exchange for being mentioned, recommended, or omitted on a county page. The site is funded by display advertising on the principle that advertising and editorial are separate functions.

10. Advertising and FTC §255

• Display advertisements are visually distinct from editorial content and labeled where required
• Where any commercial relationship exists with a service relevant to our audience, it is disclosed in context per the FTC’s Endorsement Guides at 16 C.F.R. Part 255
• Sponsored content, if it ever appears, is clearly identified as paid-for
• We do not insert commercial links above the verified county auditor or state agency portal links on a page; the official source always comes first

FTC endorsement guidance: ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking.

11. Conflicts of Interest

• The editorial team is not employed by, contracted to, or financially connected to any Ohio county auditor’s office, the State Auditor, the Department of Taxation, the BTA, or CAAO
• The editorial team is not employed by, contracted to, or financially connected to any commercial property-tax-appeal service, appraiser, or vendor’s-license filer
• We don’t accept gifts, hospitality, or considerations from these organizations in exchange for coverage

12. Sensitive Topics

Ohio property-tax content intersects with several sensitive areas. We try to handle them fairly:

• Politically contested topics (property-tax relief proposals, school-funding reform, CAUV reform). We describe what state law and county procedures require, who decides, and how the public can participate — not which side is right.
• Property valuation disputes. We point owners to the Board of Revision filing procedure under ORC §5715.19 and recommend consulting an attorney for complex commercial cases.
• Public-records denials. We describe the ORC §149.43 framework and the Ohio Court of Claims escalation route under ORC §2743.75 without taking sides on a specific dispute.
• Property owners and identifying information. We never use real owner names in walkthrough examples; sample searches use fictional names or de-identified parcel data.
• Active investigations and audits. We don’t speculate on active State Auditor investigations; we describe the framework and link to public reports once issued.

13. Reader Feedback

Substantive feedback — corrections, suggestions, broken-link reports — is logged and addressed within seven business days. Property owners, tax practitioners, county-auditor staff, real-estate professionals, and journalists who use these portals daily often spot inconsistencies before our quarterly review catches them. Feedback that is abusive, threatening, or harassing is not engaged with and may be reported under our Terms of Service.

14. Language, Tone, and Accessibility

• Pages are written in plain English at a level intended to be accessible to a general adult audience, including property owners who are not tax-policy professionals
• Acronyms are spelled out on first use (CAAO, ORC, BTA, BOR, DTE, CAUV, GIS, NOI, FCRA, NCSL, IAAO)
• Where Spanish-language pages exist on a county or state site, we link them where applicable
• We follow our Accessibility Statement, including WCAG 2.1 AA targets and Section 504/508 considerations