Ask almost any Commissioner of the Revenue, Treasurer, or assessor in Virginia about staffing, and you’ll hear about open positions and how hard they are to fill. That’s real. But the bigger risk usually isn’t the empty desk. It’s what leaves with the person who used to sit there: years of knowledge about local ordinances, relief programs, and the exceptions that never made it into a manual or into the county tax billing and collection system. Hiring can replace a person. It can’t replace that experience on day one.
Why Virginia Feels This More Than Most States
Virginia’s structure makes the knowledge problem sharper than it is in most states. The Commissioner of the Revenue and the Treasurer are elected constitutional officers, so turnover doesn’t only happen at the staff level. An election or a retirement can change who runs the office, and experienced deputies sometimes leave in the transition.
The work is also split across offices. The Commissioner assesses personal property and business taxes, the Treasurer bills and collects, and in many localities a separate assessor values real estate. Every handoff between those offices depends on people who know how the other side works, and that knowledge is rarely written down anywhere.
The Knowledge That Isn’t in the Manual
Every revenue office has written procedures. What’s harder to capture is the judgment that sits around them: which accounts need a second look before bills go out, how your locality applies PPTRA car tax relief to edge cases, how elderly and disabled relief, land use, and BPOL are handled under your local ordinances, and which steps have to happen in a particular order before a run can close.
That last one matters more than most people realize. On one implementation I worked on, a key set of steps in the bill run process didn’t happen. The person who would have caught it wasn’t involved, and the steps weren’t written down anywhere the rest of the team would see. Nothing about the software was wrong. But the run was delayed while the team worked backward to figure out what had been missed and why.
Moments like that rarely make it into a staffing report, but they’re where the real cost of turnover shows up. Every year, workloads also get more complex, with new relief programs, changing collection rules, and taxpayers who expect online access and a secure payment portal for property taxes. Offices are being asked to do more while the people who know how it all fits together are retiring.
It’s Not Just Virginia
The Virginia Department of Human Resource Management reports that service retirements remain above average and names knowledge transfer as a workforce priority. [sfac.virginia.gov] Nationally, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) reports that demand for public finance professionals already exceeds supply, and expects retirements to widen the gap. [gfoa.org] As GFOA Executive Director Chris Morrill put it: “The number one challenge I consistently hear about is attracting and retaining talent.” For offices that collect and assess the revenue a locality runs on, that gap shows up in every billing cycle.
What Leading Revenue Offices Are Doing Differently
Forward-looking offices are starting with a few honest questions instead of a job posting:
Which processes depend on one person?
If a key employee retired tomorrow, what critical knowledge would disappear with them? Bill runs, relief processing, and year-end close are good places to start.
Which workflows remain highly manual?
Where are staff spending time on administrative work rather than taxpayer service and decision-making?
How accessible is institutional knowledge?
Can new employees find the information they need without relying on a single subject matter expert?
Are systems helping preserve expertise?
Or are they relying on spreadsheets, personal notes, and disconnected processes?
Where Technology Fits
Workforce resilience isn’t only an HR issue. The systems an office uses can either hold its knowledge or hide it. When critical steps are built into a consistent workflow, such as automated property tax notice generation and delinquent tax tracking and enforcement tools, and notes, history, and supporting documents stay with the record, a new deputy in the Commissioner’s or Treasurer’s office can follow the process instead of relying on someone’s memory. That’s true whether the work is a personal property assessment, a relief application, a bill run, or a delinquent account.
An integrated tax and CAMA solution adds another layer of protection. When assessment data and billing data stay connected, the handoff between the assessor, the Commissioner, and the Treasurer depends less on one person remembering how the pieces fit.
At Catalis, we see firsthand how agencies benefit from tax billing and collection software for governments that centralizes information, supports consistent processes, and helps preserve institutional knowledge as experienced staff retire and new employees come on board. While technology cannot replace expertise, it can help ensure that critical information remains accessible long after experienced employees transition out of an organization.
Preparing for the Next Generation of Public Service
The offices best positioned for the future are focusing on three priorities:
- Capturing institutional knowledge before it leaves.
- Standardizing processes to reduce dependency on individuals.
- Equipping staff with modern tools, including property tax collection software, that support continuity and efficiency.
Because while staffing shortages may eventually improve, the need for operational resilience is here to stay.
Coming Next in This Series
AI, Automation, and the Future of Revenue Administration in Virginia
As workforce pressures continue, many offices are evaluating automation and AI-enabled tools to improve efficiency and service delivery. In Part 2, we’ll look at how Virginia offices can approach these tools with data security and human oversight first, and the questions every Commissioner, Treasurer, and assessor should ask before investing in new solutions.