SACRAMENTO AND LOS ANGELES — The Golden State officially isn't worth what it was a year ago.
Tax officials reported Tuesday that total statewide property values fell by 2.4% in the latest fiscal year, the first such drop since California began keeping records 76 years ago in the depths of the Great Depression.
The drop results from county tax assessors across the state hustling to lower the values of residential, commercial and industrial properties to reflect damage wrought by the deepest national recession since World War II.
As of June 30, the assessed value of all taxable property in California was $4.448 trillion, down $107.2 billion from a year earlier. The loss means less money and more misery for already strapped state, local and school district treasuries.
Essential public health and safety programs are facing more budget cuts and personnel layoffs, while schools probably will pack more children into each classroom, tax collectors warn.
"It's pretty astounding. This is something we haven't been through before," said Howard Roth, the chief economist at the state Department of Finance. "This will hurt and have a lagging effect on revenues" that could last years.
Thirty-eight of California's 58 counties suffered year-to-year declines, with 14 counties posting drops of 5% or more, the state Board of Equalization reported.
Southern California values dropped by an average of 2.5%, close to the statewide average. The damage ranged from a decline of 0.6% in Los Angeles County to a decrease of 10.5% in Riverside County.
Regionally, the Central Valley, which experienced a housing construction and sales boom early in the decade as coastal residents sought affordable mortgages, was the hardest hit by the collapsing market. Assessed values fell 9.9% in the northern San Joaquin Valley, 4.8% in greater Sacramento and 4.2% in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
San Francisco was the only highly urban county to show a significant increase in real estate values, 7.1%.
Historically, increasing property values always have been taken for granted in California, a state that for decades has welcomed new residents from across the country and across the world, said Betty Yee, chairwoman of the Board of Equalization, the agency charged with keeping track of real estate tax revenues.
