Your guide to the SLO County assessor and auditor-controller races
Two major roles in San Luis Obispo County’s government — county assessor and county auditor-controller-treasurer-tax collector-public administrator — are on the ballot this June.
The current incumbents are the only people running for the two roles.
The assessor is tasked with finding, taking inventory and then valuing all property in SLO County. The assessor is also responsible for making and maintaining assessment maps for all real property, as well as tracking and updating ownership records, according to the county’s assessor’s website.
The office is perhaps most well-known among residents for calculating homeowners’ property taxes.
The auditor-controller-treasurer-tax collector-public administrator acts as the chief financial officer for SLO County’s government.
The administrator is a “guardian of funds” distributed to the county, cities, schools and districts and provides an independent analysis of financial information.
The administrator leads four departments: the auditor-controller division, which performs all county auditing and accounting functions; the treasury division, which invests and protects county funds; the tax collector division, which issues tax bills; and the public administrator division, which distributes the estates of some deceased county residents.
Here are the candidates on the ballot for the two county positions:
Who are the candidates?
County assessor Tom Bordonaro Jr. is the lone candidate running for that office in 2026. A Paso Robles resident, he has served in the assessor position since 2003.
Previously, he was a member of the California State Assembly for four years and then went on to serve as a commissioner for the California Board of Prison terms and worked as a Realtor at a real estate brokerage firm.
As the assessor, Bordonaro has worked to “create a more taxpayer-friendly office, leveraged technology to do more for less, and cut the number of assessment appeals in half,” he said on his campaign website.
Auditor-controller incumbent Jim Hamilton was first elected to the role in 2018.
Prior to leading the office, the certified public accountant was employed in the department for 16 years, serving a variety of roles, most recently working as second-in-command to the last auditor-controller Jim Erb, who retired in 2018.
Who is funding the races?
Bordonaro has raised $4,200, according to the most recent campaign finance reports available.
Most of those contributions are personal loans, along with a $1,500 donation from the Lincoln Club of San Luis Obispo County, which is part of a large conservative donor network aiming “to preserve the American way of life” since the early 1960s.
As of April 3, there was no campaign finance data available for Hamilton.
