Four towns take hit on state RR revision

A new reassessment directive from the Washington State Department of Revenue has resulted in a drop in assessed property values in Farmington, LaCrosse, Lamont and Malden.

Farmington dropped the most, going from $11,530,000 in total property value to $8,764,730, due to adjustments for the second and third year of a four-year process to remove rail-car allocations from county numbers.

Previously, each Washington county was assigned a share of the total rail cars crossing the state each day. The Whitman County Assessor's office would take their number and divide it among each town in the county,...