How an Ascension assessor allegedly tampered with his property taxes — and tried to hide it

Involved with local civic groups for years, Justin B. Champlin has had a reputation as straight-edge public employee with a keen eye for the figures and back-office procedures associated with property taxes. He also played an important role in modernizing the Ascension Parish Assessor's Office. 

But Champlin has now lost his position as chief deputy assessor and is facing malfeasance and other criminal counts over a property tax scheme alleged to have netted him only $1,000, officials revealed last week.

Champlin is accused of using his intimate knowledge of the office's software and of the parish taxation process to cut his property tax bill improperly and try to hide the changes from public scrutiny, according to an internal assessor's investigation.

Assessor's Office officials said Champlin, 44, lowered the assessed values on his Bluff Road area home in 2022 and 2023 just days before tax rolls were sent to the Louisiana Tax Commission and eventually to the parish sheriff's office where annual tax bills are generated and collected.

The improperly lowered values on his home were used to create his annual bills, the officials said their audit found.

But, once the tax roll information was sent, Champlin either switched his home value back up or prevented his lowered property assessment from showing up in public searches of his name, the internal investigation found.  

Assessor's Office employees were able to uncover allegedly improper changes in 2022 and 2023 that saved Champlin $1,084.79 combined in taxes on a home that assessment records say was fully valued at $273,400 in 2023.

Assessor M.J. "Mert" Smiley Jr. and another top deputy said in an interview after Champlin's arrest that Assessor's Office workers stumbled on the alleged manipulations when they were trying to correct unrelated technical problems with how homestead exemptions were showing up on the assessor's website.

Champlin was among several Assessor's Office employees whose names had been used to test if the technical problems were corrected, Smiley and the deputy said.

But Champlin's personal property didn't show up on the public-facing side of the assessor's website in the test run, leading to questions that uncovered Champlin's alleged actions.

"It was by accident we found this," said Holly Joffrion, Smiley's special projects coordinator who was part of the internal audit and is now the interim chief deputy.

A trusted employee

Champlin, who had been with the assessor's office since 2012, was dismissed in lieu of termination on April 2, and Smiley's office turned over the results of its internal investigation to Gonzales Police on April 17. 

Champlin turned himself in to Gonzales Police on Tuesday and was booked on two counts each of injuring public records and computer tampering in addition to the malfeasance count.

He was released from parish jail late the same night on $15,000 bail, online records show. Champlin hasn't returned a call for comment left Tuesday. 

A family member at his home Wednesday morning said he was out of jail but wasn't home and declined to comment.

The allegations have surprised people who know Champlin, particularly given the relatively little amount of tax money saved and the risks he allegedly took to himself and his career.

Smiley said he "feels for (Champlin's) family" and what has occurred, but suggested his hand was forced by Champlin's alleged actions.

After the discovery of the matter, Smiley said, he could no longer trust Champlin but had planned only to dismiss the former top aide and make him pay the back taxes.

After Smiley spoke with Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre and District Attorney Ricky Babin about how to proceed, the assessor said, Babin told him that Champlin may have broken the law, prompting the criminal probe.

"That's not my decision," Smiley said.

A spokesman for Babin didn't return an email for comment last week.

Values key to tax bills

It is the job of the Assessor's Office to value properties for the purposes of taxation, raising or lowering them depending on improvements, market fluctuations and other factors.

Once valuations are calculated, property tax millage rates adopted by local governments are applied to these assessed values to determine annual tax bills. Lower assessed values can result in lower property taxes if tax rates remain the same.

It was part of Champlin's job to adjust assessed values for property owners when conditions merited them, Smiley said. But Smiley and Joffrion said they've concluded the pattern of the changes made by Champlin to the assessed values on his home were improper.

The changes didn't affect the land on which his home sat but the structure itself through the manipulation of a rating that assigns a value per square foot to a home, Joffrion explained.

Smiley said his office has had an unwritten policy that his employees can't change their own property assessments, but, since the discovery of Champlin's alleged actions, Smiley has made it a written policy that requires the sign-off by three people in his office, including him. 

Responding to a public records request last week, Smiley and Joffrion provided an audit summary of Champlin's activities in the assessor's software system and provided explanations of what they say it shows.

They said the report shows that in 2022 Champlin lowered his home's assessed value by nearly 13% from $24,820 to $21,640 on Sept. 17 of that year. The assessed value of a residence is 10% of market value, so the $21,640 assessment for Champlin's home translates into a market value of $216,400.

The move saved him $388.48 in property tax, according to the assessor's figures.

Three days later, on Sept. 20, after the 2022 tax rolls had been sent to the Tax Commission, Champlin raised the value 26% to $27,340, the audit report shows.

Joffrion said that second change ensured that if anyone had searched Champlin's name on the assessor's website, it would have showed the higher value, not the lower value on which he actually paid taxes.

Hiding the trail

In 2023, Assessor's Office officials allege Champlin took a slightly different approach. The office had implemented software upgrades that allow officials to prevent some properties and their assessments from showing up in searches on the public-facing side of the assessor's website.

Joffrion said this function is legal and is reserved for domestic violence situations, ongoing law enforcement investigations and other limited instances. 

The assessor's audit shows Champlin took an intermediate step on May 25, 2023, lowering his property assessment from $27,340 to $24,820. At some point after that, the new search suppression function became available in the assessor's software and, on Aug. 1, 2023, Champlin blocked his home's assessed value from public view.

Then, on Sept. 16, with his property value hidden, Champlin lowered his assessed value again, from $24,820 to $21,640, the internal audit summary shows.  

The 2023 tax roll was sent to the state Tax Commission nine days later, on Sept. 25. The combined reductions in 2023 saved him $696.31, according to the assessor's figures.

Champlin's property tax bills issued by the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office for 2022 and 2023 corroborate that he paid tax on the lesser assessed values laid out in the assessor's internal audit.

Smiley added that one final alleged action helped push the claims of wrongdoing into the criminal arena.

Hours after Champlin was dismissed on April 2 — but before all his password access could be changed — Champlin allegedly went back into the system and made his property assessment viewable by the public again, Smiley and Joffrion said.

They speculated the change was an apparent attempt to obscure that the lowered assessment had been hidden for months.

Smiley added that a subsequent investigation has not turned up instances where Champlin made similar improper assessed value changes for anyone else.