By Dillon Rosenblatt | Arizona Capitol Times
An applicant for the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office withdrew from consideration minutes after he was caught plagiarizing large swaths of his application to replace Paul Petersen, who resigned in early January.
A Google search showed Michael Farrar, a former member of the Carefree Town Council who ran unsuccessfully for the House in 2010, completely lifted full passages from Forbes, the California State Association of Counties, and other websites into his application and attempted to play them off as his own.
Each of the 12 applicants for the job – which includes two former lawmakers, an attorney at Rose Law Group and a perennial candidate – was asked 14 questions, and Farrar plagiarized his written responses to at least five of them.
The first question on the application asked him to explain what the assessor does.
He stole 198 words out of a 211-word definition on the California State Association of Counties site.