Loudoun Real Estate Assessments Need Government 2.0 Help

While it is not entirely clear whether the statements or follow up exchange on the issue of whether Loudoun County's 2007 Real Estate Assessments far exceed market value are accurate, there are two interesting points that we hope will become clearer in 2008.

First - Local Government officials need to better understand the Internet and blogosphere. Whether they're right or not, asking someone to remove a blog entry after it's been linked to and indexed by all the major search engines is entirely fruitless. The cached content of the site not only will remain for a long time as Internet historical evidence, but the continued fallout and commentary among other bloggers and journalists will also guarantee that the posted material persists and gains even more visibility. Better to simply put out better, additional, more constructive information to counter what seems incorrect or misleading. This is a well-known mechanism of "reputation management" on the Internet - once the cat's out of the bag, the best thing to do is overwhelm the forum with better information. The Government official said "I nor any member of my staff will engage you via your blog regarding your perceptions of the operations of local government" - and now look what's happened; they are in fact engaging the owners via the blog, albeit by various proxies, and other blogs as well.