When Guilford County taxpayers line up at an upcoming Thursday, Oct. 2, public hearing for people to comment on or challenge the way the Guilford County Tax Department is determining property values for 2026, many will be surprised to learn that part of the information about how the county’s revaluation process operates can’t be copied, taken home or made public.
The state requires that counties adopt what’s called a “schedule of values, standards and rules” before each countywide property revaluation. That document is the playbook tax department appraisers use to assign new values to every house, lot and commercial building.
By North Carolina law, those schedules have to be placed in the assessor’s office for public inspection and the Board of Commissioners must hold a hearing before adoption. But part of the methodology used in the reval is basically kept secret. It cannot be given out to the public who will be paying the bills and there is only one way to see it.
If you want to see all of the recipe that is determining your property values – including the secret sauce – you can, but only in a “skiff” like those in which government officials view highly classified documents. Someone will be with you all the time to make sure you don’t take a cell phone picture, copy anything down or replicate the information in any way.
You are able to see the complex data if you are willing to do what it takes.
You must drive to downtown Greensboro during work hours, find a parking place, go to the second floor of the Independence Building and ask to view the documents. You will be escorted into a room and allowed to examine the info.
“Someone will be in the room with you the whole time,” a tax department official told the Rhino Times.
The county has posted many of the processes and practices online, but some of the formulas and schedules that tax assessors use to determine what a piece of property is worth come from a national vendor known as Marshall & Swift – now part of CoreLogic, which sells cost-estimation tables used by appraisers across the country.
Those tables – sometimes referred to as the “Marshall & Swift manual” – are copyrighted.
And that copyright means it can’t be treated like other public records, even though it’s an integral part of the valuation process for Guilford County and other counties across the state.
North Carolina’s public records law generally gives anyone the right to obtain copies of county records, with some rare exceptions such as personnel records and, for instance, correspondence of companies secretly considering locating in a city or county.
However, state statute also says copying material can be denied when “otherwise specifically provided by law.”
In this case, federal copyright law takes precedence: Counties can let residents read the tables under supervision, but they can’t hand out photocopies, allow iPhone photos or provide digital scans.
That means that county taxpayers can technically see the cost schedules – but only while sitting in a county office with someone watching. Unless you have a photographic memory, you may be out of luck when it comes to knowing what you want to know.
State officials have acknowledged the issue in the past: The North Carolina Attorney General’s office has said that, when the government holds copyrighted works, it cannot copy or distribute them without the owner’s consent. The same rule applies to software licenses and trade secrets turned over to public agencies.
Therefore, in Guilford County, a major part of the revaluation process remains off-limits to ordinary taxpayers in any practical sense.
By law, the schedules of values must be available to inspect – and they are – however, the most detailed cost data inside them stays locked down by copyright.
Therefore, the massively important process that will set new taxable values for every home and business in Guilford County in 2026 depends on information that property owners can’t freely access, copy or study outside the assessor’s office.
It’s a legal black box built into the heart of the county’s valuation system, but it is in accordance with state law.
Recently, the county sent out the notice for the October 2 public hearing which read, “The purpose of the PUBLIC HEARING is to solicit public comments on the proposed Schedules, Standards and Rules to be used for the Guilford County 2026 Property Tax Reappraisal. A copy of the proposed schedules, standards and rules will be available for public inspection in the County Tax Director’s Office located in the Independence Center at 400 West Market Street, 2nd floor, Greensboro. The portion of the proposed schedule of values that is not subject to copyright will also be posted on the Tax Department webpage.”
Guilford County Attorney Andrea Leslie-Fite, in an email, informed the Rhino Times that NC General Statute 105-317(c) “provides for the inspection of the schedules, and that is why the inspection language was used in the notice.”
She added, “There are certain components of the schedule of values which contain trade secrets pursuant to G.S. 66-152 which include the compilation of information, methods, techniques which are not subject to public record. The portions that are not subject to G.S. 65-152 are on the website and may also be copied if desired subject to the typical requirements for copying public records.”
