Marya Crigler, Travis County's chief appraiser, announces retirement

Marya Crigler, Travis County's chief appraiser since December 2011 and an unsparing critic of state laws she says make appraisals in Texas needlessly hard, will retire in early 2024.

Crigler, a former intern who over 30-plus years occupied many positions at Travis Central Appraisal District, on Friday notified the district's board of her decision. Her position isn't an elected one, and the board will begin a search for her replacement.

"It's time for me to retire," Crigler told the American-Statesman.

Crigler's departure deepens a makeover of the Travis County offices that handle real estate or tax matters. Bruce Elfant, who works closely with Crigler as the county's tax assessor-collector, is not running for reelection next year for a position he has held since 2013. Vying to replace him in the Democratic primary is Celia Israel, a former state representative who ran for Austin mayor last year. Another potential candidate is Austin City Council Member Leslie Pool, who will leave the council after three terms, and who informed a local Democratic club she is considering running to succeed Elfant.

The county clerk's office, which maintains real estate records, is also in transition under newcomer Dyana Limon-Mercado, who took over in January from Dana DeBeauvoir, who led the office for 36 years.

Elfant, who as a member of the appraisal board will help pick the next chief appraiser, said Crigler's departure will be a big loss.

"Marya's been an incredible resource," he said. "She's one of the most knowledgeable appraisers in the state, and having proximity to the Capitol, she's taken advantage of that."

The departures come in the wake of an explosion in Austin's housing market, fueled by the arrival of major technology companies like Google, Oracle and Samsung. In 2022, when housing demand in Austin greatly exceeded housing supply, the value of the median home in Travis County was $632,000 — a 53% increase from just a year earlier.

In the past 10 years, the number of taxable properties in the county has increased by 18% to 477,000.

Crigler's office employs 65 appraisers who analyze properties to establish market value. A property's value is among many factors that determine a tax bill, an equation that also includes the tax rate set by school districts and other taxing jurisdictions.

"I see our role as appraisal districts as gatekeepers of fairness in the entire system," Crigler said. "I'm not an advocate for the taxing unit, and I'm not an advocate for the taxpayer. I'm trying to get the fair market value and doing what's right. If I'm following that gold standard, and I'm on the line right, the system works."

Crigler has long railed against state laws that she says make it hard to accurately and promptly assess property values. Texas is among 12 nondisclosure states, meaning a home's sales price — a figure that draws a close connection to value — is not automatically available to appraisal districts. In Texas, appraisal offices must instead depend on less reliable sources.

Crigler's attempt to gain better information in 2019 led to her creating a formula, pulling from bank and deed records. It was needed, she said, after the Austin Board of Realtors sent a cease-and-desist accusing the appraisal district of accessing sales data without a license through a third-party vendor. The cease-and-desist prompted Crigler's office to file a lawsuit against the third-party vendor, CoreLogic. The lawsuit is pending.

As a result of the dispute, Crigler's office did not update residential appraisals in 2020.

Crigler's new methodology is now used by other Texas appraisers. It is also used by the state comptroller's office, which grades the quality of appraisals, requiring that they be within 5% of the state's assessment.

In 2018, Crigler was hit with a lawsuit by property owners who said she and Betty Thompson, the review board chair, overbooked hearings on their appraisal protests to keep them from having the professional representation they wanted in a war on tax agents. The case was settled when Crigler agreed to new protest hearings for 135 property owners.

Crigler says the increased volume of appraisal protests has made her job harder. Twenty years ago, her office handled 35,000 protests a year. This year, it handled 180,000.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a former Texas senator, credited Crigler with helping him in 2019 to craft a Senate bill, which became law, that ensured people who inherit their homes without a will receive homeowner protections, such as the homestead exemption.

“Being chief appraiser is a thankless job, but Marya absolutely deserves our thanks," Watson said. "I worked with Marya a lot while in the Texas Senate and appreciated the expertise and encyclopedic knowledge she brought to legislative debates. She is a true public servant with a fierce dedication to fairness and integrity in Texas’ property tax and appraisal system. Some people have service as part of their DNA. Marya is one of them. She’ll be missed, but I wish her great happiness."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the defendant in a lawsuit from the Travis County Appraisal District over sales records. The defendant is CoreLogic.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Marya Crigler, Travis County's chief appraiser, announces retirement