The Tale of the Radioactive Butterfly of Delco

Once upon a time, deep in the damp green hills of Butterfly Valley, there stood a peculiar little kingdom called Delco.

Delco was famous for four things:

its endless committees;

its endless press releases;

its endless emergency meetings about transparency;

and its supernatural ability to explain why absolutely nothing was ever its fault.

The people of Delco paid taxes faithfully every year and were constantly reassured by the Royal Council:

“Everything is fair.”
“Everything is equal.”
“Everybody’s assessment was raised uniformly by 20%.”
“Please stop looking at spreadsheets.”

Now, far away on the warm southern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, there lived a deeply troublesome creature who maliciously owned property in Delco and even more maliciously paid taxes there for decades.

The creature was not a dragon.
Not a witch.
Not even a currently billing lawyer.

No.

She was much worse.

She was a journalist-statistician-formerly-toiling-lawyer with spreadsheets.

The Royal Council feared spreadsheets more than dragons.

Because dragons merely burned villages.

But spreadsheets compared numbers.

And numbers, unlike dragons, left documentary evidence.

One spring morning, while wandering through the enchanted Royal Tax Forest, the journalist noticed something strange.

The royal assessment graph did not resemble the beautiful straight “uniform 20% path” promised by the Royal Ambassadors from every rooftop in the kingdom.

Instead, it looked like a butterfly.

A gigantic multicolored butterfly.

One wing glowed deep red.

The other wing shimmered bright blue.

And there was no middle path at all.

The red wing contained castles mysteriously assessed far BELOW the proclaimed benchmark.

Some so far below that the tax break itself was bigger than the recent arms-length sale price.

The blue wing contained cottages assessed far ABOVE what neighboring villagers paid.

And somehow — even after the overassessed blue cottages were added together — the giant underassessed red castles still outweighed them.

By approximately 1.7 million dollars.

In just the 53-parcel sample in the poverty-stricken Town of Hamden alone.

The butterfly fluttered silently above the kingdom whispering:

“Somebody is paying less.”
“Somebody else is paying more.”
“Somebody is about to become very nervous.”

The journalist adjusted her enchanted calculator.

“Interesting,” she said.

So she gathered fifty-three magical parcels to double-check - because that's what all boring statisticians do - and compared:

recent sale prices;
actual assessments;
and the Royal Promise of “uniform 20% increases for everyone.”

The numbers exploded like fireworks inside a tax office.

One castle sold for $763,000 had somehow become magically assessed at only $144,900.

Another sold for $575,000 yet floated through the royal tax rolls at merely $222,100.

The butterfly twitched.

Then the butterflies of Butterfly Valley became extremely agitated.

Because the obnoxious creature with the calculator began noticing something else.

Some of the fattest, reddest butterfly wings belonged not merely to random peasants, but to Very Important People of the Kingdom.

Some belonged to:
royal ambassadors;
committee knights;
keepers of public funds;
friends of the castle;
and gentlemen who loudly shouted:

“Fairness for all!”

while privately fluttering through the valley on highly unusual assessments.

One ambassador in particular was famous throughout Delco for shaking his fist at journalists.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

He had once cornered another reporter and waved a balled fist like an enraged medieval goose defending a pile of enchanted receipts.

Naturally, this made him exceptionally qualified for:
public accountability speeches;
oversight boards;
special committees;
and perhaps a particularly luxurious butterfly wing.

The journalist looked at the spreadsheet.

Then at the ambassador.

Then back at the spreadsheet.

“Oh dear,” she whispered.

Because the butterfly was no longer merely statistical.

It had become political.

And political butterflies are the natural enemy of castles.

Especially castles with delayed audits.

Soon the Royal Court stopped discussing:
the numbers;
the sale prices;
the missing school money;
the disappearing tax base;
or the magical vanishing assessments.

Instead every hearing became:

“Why is this journalist so persistent?”
“Why does she keep looking at records?”
“Why does she keep comparing numbers?”
“Can somebody file sanctions against this butterfly woman?”

Meanwhile the ambassador continued shaking his fist.

The Royal Wizard of Delco nodded approvingly from Hancock Castle.

And the Royal Audit Turtle quietly delayed itself another two months.

While all this was happening, something very peculiar continued inside Butterfly Valley.

Some tax breaks became so enormous that the butterfly’s red wing began flashing.

The journalist blinked.

Then blinked again.

At first she assumed the Royal Assessors had merely misplaced a decimal point beneath a stack of committee minutes and emergency public-relations statements.

But the more she compared:
recent sale prices;
actual assessments;
and the Royal Promise of “uniform 20% increases,”

the stranger the butterfly became.

Because once the “uniform 20% increase” was added back into the spread, the upper butterfly wing was no longer merely 81% below the supposed benchmark.

For one red castle, it reached 101% - more than the actual sale price itself.

The butterfly had become radioactive.

Now, had the Royal Council simply said:
“Yes, assessments vary,”

nobody would have cared much.

But the Royal Council had spent months screaming:

“UNIFORM!”
“FAIR!”
“EVERYBODY 20%!”
“PLEASE STOP LOOKING AT THE BUTTERFLY!”

Unfortunately for governments, butterflies are difficult to cross-examine.

The journalist then made a horrifying discovery.

The fifty-three parcels were merely a spoonful from a kingdom containing 44,117 parcels spread across nineteen municipalities.

Nineteen.

Forty-four thousand one hundred seventeen.

The enchanted calculator began smoking violently.

Then the journalist committed the greatest crime of all.

She extrapolated.

Now, extrapolation is ancient and forbidden statistical magic.

Kings hate it.

Committees fear it.

Public-relations departments treat it the same way medieval villagers treated plague rats.

Because extrapolation asks one horrifying question:

“If this is happening HERE… how much is happening EVERYWHERE?”

The journalist immediately added important disclaimers to her scrolls, because unlike the Royal Council, statisticians occasionally enjoy methodological caution.

She carefully explained:

equalization rates differed across municipalities;
assessment practices differed;
not all towns had the same proclaimed 20% increase;
and therefore, under normal conditions of statistical inquiry it would not be proper to simply multiply the fifty-three-parcel sample mechanically across all nineteen municipalities and declare an exact county-wide number.

But she also explained something else.

The Kingdom of Delco itself had made accurate verification impossible.

Because the moment the butterfly began glowing and then flashing — and the moment Delco saw that interesting butterfly activity when routinely surveilling the creature’s IP address activity on Delco's online systems (as Delco’s court ambassador inadvertently blurted under oath in court papers) — Delco suddenly:
raised paywalls;
raised double paywalls;
restricted deed access;
obstructed record review;
and generally behaved like a dragon sitting on top of a pile of tax rolls screaming:

“NO YOU MAY NOT CHECK THE REST.”

Which meant the kingdom was simultaneously claiming:

“You do not have enough data to prove county-wide underassessment!”

while also screaming:

“AND YOU MAY NOT ACCESS THE DATA NECESSARY TO VERIFY IT!”

This impressed the Royal Committees enormously.

Still, the extrapolation itself terrified the kingdom.

Because according to the Royal Census Scrolls, the entire Kingdom of Delco contained only about 44,191 people.

Forty-four thousand one hundred ninety-one.

A tiny kingdom.

A poor kingdom.

A kingdom perpetually wandering from one public meeting to another sighing dramatically about:
budget shortages;
staffing shortages;
road repair crises;
school pressures;
equipment problems;
tax burdens;
financial emergencies;
and the eternal tragedy that there was simply never enough money for anything.

Every committee meeting in Delco sounded like a medieval famine announcement.

“We regret to inform the peasants that the treasury is empty.”
“Again.”
“Please prepare for another difficult budget season.”

The Royal Audit Turtle itself had recently announced that the kingdom’s audit was delayed because of staffing shortages and unfinished financial records.

The villagers were therefore constantly instructed to:
pay more taxes;
accept fewer services;
expect delays;
lower expectations;
and appreciate the difficult financial reality facing the kingdom.

Which made the butterfly deeply inconvenient.

Because if the same general rate of giant butterfly-wing tax breaks appearing inside the fifty-three-parcel sample were even remotely consistent across the broader kingdom—

even approximately—

then the hidden burden shifted away from favored castles and onto ordinary taxpayers and local schools would not merely be “large.”

The underassessment - with all disclaimed variables that Delco would not let the creature see - would then approach

ONE BILLION FOUR HUNDRED FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS.

$1,415,073,584.91 - not in taxes, of course, but in tax underassessments that can generate taxes at different equalization rates.

At this point the enchanted calculator suffered what experts later described as an acute fiscal nervous breakdown.

Smoke began pouring from its buttons.

Its tiny enchanted receipt printer started screaming continuously.

Several numbers attempted to flee the spreadsheet entirely.

The calculator desperately tried:
rounding the number down;
dividing it by committees;
placing it inside an executive session;
hiding it behind equalization rates;
and finally pretending it was merely a “communication issue.”

Nothing worked.

The number remained there.

Glowing.

Judgmental.

One billion four hundred fifteen million dollars of potentially underassessed value, hidden behind Delco's paywalled deed records data.

The calculator immediately attempted to resign from public service, seek witness protection, and relocate to a peaceful accounting office in Vermont.

Unfortunately the Royal Council confiscated its batteries.

Three emergency committees were formed immediately.

The Committee on Dangerous Arithmetic.

The Committee on Public Confidence in Smaller Numbers.

And the Special Advisory Task Force on Why the Butterfly Is Probably Racist Against Castles.

Meanwhile the radioactive butterfly hovered peacefully above Delco whispering:

“The funds are literally right there, Your Majesty.”

Right there inside the glowing red wing.

Right there inside the castles floating mysteriously beneath proclaimed “uniform” assessments.

Right there inside giant invisible tax breaks quietly shifting the tax burden away from favored properties and onto ordinary villagers carrying exploding tax bills through the snow.

The horrifying part was not merely the butterfly itself.

The horrifying part was that the kingdom appeared far more interested in guillotining the woman pointing at the butterfly—

than in addressing the butterfly itself.

Because when the giant extrapolated number was spread across the population of Delco, the burden came out to roughly:

THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS PER PERSON.

Per person.

The journalist immediately added yet another disclaimer, because statisticians enjoy ruining dramatic moments with additional accuracy.

She explained:

“Not every villager owns property.”
“Not every villager pays property taxes directly.”
“Children do not pay school taxes.”
“Many residents are poor.”
“Some villagers rent.”
“Therefore the actual burden on actual taxpayers would likely be MUCH HIGHER.”

The calculator burst briefly into flames.

Because suddenly the butterfly was no longer merely fluttering around spreadsheets.

Now it hovered directly above:
school budgets;
roads;
retirees;
working families;
small businesses;
and one of the poorest rural kingdoms in New York.

A kingdom forever insisting:

“There is no money.”
“We are struggling.”
“The budget is strained.”
“The audit is delayed.”
“The staffing crisis is severe.”
“Please prepare for cuts.”

And all the while the butterfly kept hovering silently above the kingdom whispering:

“The funds are right there.”

The journalist attempted to explain:

“I am literally asking for access to records so I can determine whether the extrapolation is accurate.”

The Royal Wizard of Delco nearly swallowed his own beard in panic.

“Exactly!” he cried.
“That is the dangerous part!”

The Royal Council immediately convened:
an Emergency Transparency Committee;
a Special Committee on Public Confidence;
a Task Force on Misinformation;
and a Working Group on Dangerous Butterflies.

Because in Delco every crisis was solved by:
forming a committee;
issuing a press release;
or delaying an audit.

Especially delaying an audit.

The Royal Audit Turtle was therefore summoned again.

The turtle arrived carrying a sign reading:

“AUDIT COMING… EVENTUALLY.”

The Council applauded wildly.

Meanwhile the journalist attempted to continue reviewing deeds and records.

But suddenly:
paywalls appeared;
double paywalls appeared;
records became harder to access;
and magical online gates demanded coins before revealing documents that had once stood freely in sunlight.

The journalist complained.

The Council gasped in horror.

Not at the numbers.

At the complaining.

Soon the Royal Wizard of Delco emerged from Hancock Castle wearing purple robes and carrying the legendary Wand of Sanctions.

“BEHOLD!” cried the wizard.
“You are not a journalist!”
“You are a vexatious butterfly extremist!”

The wizard then cast his favorite spells:

Motionus Sanctionibus.
Prolixity Maximus.
Anti-Filing Injunctionus.
Procedural Smoke Screenicus.

Whenever the journalist pointed at numbers, the wizard waved his wand and shouted:

“LOOK OVER THERE!”

Sometimes he summoned emergency motions.

Sometimes he summoned procedural fog.

Sometimes he summoned magical affidavits declaring:

“We lack knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief…”

even about things everybody in the kingdom already knew.

Still the journalist continued gathering records.

So the Council escalated further.

Soon every hearing looked less like a court proceeding and more like a medieval anti-butterfly tribunal.

The journalist would arrive carrying graphs.

The Council would arrive carrying sanctions motions.

The judges stared nervously at the butterfly.

The butterfly stared back.

Meanwhile taxpayers throughout the kingdom opened their tax bills and screamed:

“WHY DOES MY COTTAGE PAY MORE THAN THE CASTLE?”

The schools asked:

“Where did our money go?”

The Council answered:

“Please respect the process.”

And every time the journalist tried to continue the investigation, another committee appeared explaining that:
the audit was delayed;
the staffing was difficult;
the records were unavailable;
the timing was unfortunate;
the butterfly was misleading;
the calculator was aggressive;
and perhaps the real problem was not the numbers at all—

but the woman pointing at them.

Still the butterfly refused to disappear.

Because butterflies are stubborn creatures.

Especially statistical ones.

And so the tale of the Radioactive Butterfly of Delco spread across the hills.

People laughed.

People argued.

People stared at the graphs.

But one dangerous thing happened above all:

People started looking at the numbers themselves.

And that, dear reader, was the one thing the Kingdom of Delco never wanted to happen.