California's recession of the early 1990s helped reduce the property tax inequities created by Proposition 13, but county assessors' offices paid the price, according to a study released by the Public Policy Institute of California. In "Proposition 13 in Recession and Recovery," economists Steven M. Sheffrin of UC Davis and Terri A. Sexton of California State University, Sacramento, report that declines of up to 30 percent in property values not only reduced the gap between market and assessed values, but also caused county assessors' offices to be inundated with hundreds of thousands of appeals for reassessment. The researchers found that an average new homebuyer in Los Angeles County today will pay almost four times the basic property tax of a household that has been in its home since 1975; in 1991, the average new homebuyer would have paid five times as much. But compared to owners of houses constructed or sold after 1980, today's homebuyer will pay an average of only 30 percent more in taxes. The percentage of 1975 base year properties -- a key factor in property tax disparities -- also decreased from 43 to 33 during the recession as those properties acquired new base years at selling and as new construction added to the total number of properties. Sheffrin says the State Board of Equalization, the agency assigned to oversee the property tax system, should work in a more cooperative manner with assessors' offices to ensure assessors have the training and technology they need. Sheffrin, dean of the UC Davis Division of Social Sciences and director of the university's Center for State and Local Taxation, and Sexton, also affiliated with the center, analyzed property records for 8 million properties sold in Los Angeles County and 1.4 million sold in San Mateo County in 1990-91 and 1995-96, the years bracketing the recession. The study and a summary are available at the institute's web site at .