As officials supported the new mass appraisal system for determining property values, some citizens spoke out against it.

The mass appraisal system would take samples of real estate dealings and create an average, which would be used to determine other property values.

Utah County Assessor Poulson said in August that his office uses a computer algorithm to assess the 150,000 properties in the county. But there can be errors in the system, especially when dealing with more than 100,000 properties.

"I am concerned as we move to a computerized system that we're giving a false hope to the people," said Rep. Tim Cosgrove, D-Murray. "If we want to be upfront, if we want to be able to evaluate the true value of the property we must provide the assessors the tools. I'm struggling to see how we're going to provide that for the citizens of the state."

Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, reminded the committee that "even though we're using a computerized system there's enough hands-on personal touches for evaluating the data. We can't forget that there's human beings running the system."

University of Utah economics professor Jim Gander spoke to the committee concerning issues of how the samplings were picked when determining the general values.

"I sense a feeling among most of the public that members don't feel comfortable with the existing appraisal system," Gander said.

Gander pointed out sampling problems, concerning what he calls "arms length dealing," or dealings between family members.

"What is missing is the information a willing buyer and a willing seller have," Gander said. "When homes are bought for moving in or establishing residence, that information is quite different than what speculators have. Any other sale is outside of a fair market."

These "other sales" might be what are affecting the market value, Gander told the committee. He is worried that this skewed model could be "why people aren't happy."

Poulson told the committee that although he and Utah County commissioners support the bill, Gander's sampling concerns are valid.

"If you're trying to sample the general population, if you don't have enough samples, you can go out and find more," Poulson told the committee. "But when you're dealing with real estate, you only have as many homes as are being sold. You're very limited by the amount of data you have. There are a lot of sales out there that we don't even have the access for the data."

Poulson also told the committee that Utah County has "some of the worst real estate fraud, not only just in the state, but possibly even in the nation."

Poulson said that Utah County is very involved with the transactions and data that is analyzed, and great effort it put into making adjustments to keep the property values fair.