WARREN — Leaders of the Trumbull County Auditor’s Office and Engineering Department have not been able to settle a dispute dealing with the transfer of tax map responsibilities and the transfer of employees.

Trumbull County Engineer David DeChristofaro told county commissioners during their Tuesday workshop the two offices have not been able to come to an understanding about what should be transferred to his department.

The tax map office reviews and approves surveys done by professional surveyors that indicate boundary lines for the county, reviews property descriptions, and does custom mapping, deed transfers and approvals.

“We’ve been discussing this since I came into office in January 2025,” DeChristofaro said. “Having the tax map in the engineer’s office is required by Ohio law.”

The tax map office has been operating out of the auditor’s office since 2000, when it was transferred from the engineer’s office. However, recent state rulings state the office should be located in the engineer’s office.

On Tuesday, DeChristofaro said he would not take on tax map responsibilities unless the auditor’s office also turned over geographic information system duties that would allow his department to electronically draw boundaries of the properties for the mapping.

“GIS is the tax map,” he said. “You can’t separate the two.”

Auditor Marha Yoder responded that the GIS system contains many layers above and beyond the tax map layer that her office uses for appraisals and other purposes. She argues Ohio Revised Code states tax maps are to be used by the county’s board of revision and the auditor and therefore kept in the auditor’s office.

Yoder notes the county’s GIS system was initially established in the late 1990s.

“It has historically been paid for out of the Auditor’s Real Estate Assessment fund,” Yoder said. “The fact this is a permitted use of these funds under the Ohio Administrative Code demonstrates that the GIS system is to be under the auditor’s office and is to be utilized to house the tax map.”

A tax map kept in a system not owned or controlled by the auditor would not be in compliance with the statute, Yoder noted.

“It should be noted that as part of our transition discussions, we have offered to make access to our system available,” she said. “I know that in at least one neighboring county where the tax map has been successfully separated, this is how it is done.”

DeChristofaro said he does not understand why someone would not want to give up some of the responsibilities that they have no reason to have.

“The (engineering) department that has the capability of doing it, engineers and surveyors,” he said. “We are GIS specialists.”

In previous discussions, the two departments have discussed transferring two employees of the auditor’s office to the engineer’s department. Employees of the auditor’s office are part of a union, while employees of the engineer’s office are non-union employees.

DeChristofaro suggested he would allow the employees to maintain their union-contracted health care. However, he added, if they cannot, they will be qualified for the health care plan that every other employee in the engineers’ office receives.

DeChristofaro said once the auditor employees are moved to his office, they will receive additional training so they will be able to do the work more efficiently.

The engineer last week suggested that once the tax map department is in his office, he will be able to reduce the backlog of creating tax maps from six to eight weeks to being completed in less than a week.

“This will require positive changes,” DeChristofaro said. “Tax maps can be updated in a matter of hours. This can happen.”

The engineer said that even after the tax map office is transferred, his department still will work closely with both the recorder’s and auditor’s offices.

Yoder said she is preparing a request for the Trumbull County prosecutor to obtain the Attorney General’s opinion on the placement of the GIS.