VALPARAISO | The county assessor's office soon will be getting a new $297,000 computer software program to replace the faulty system the county bought last year.

On Tuesday, the Porter County commissioners approved a contract with Indiana-based X-Soft. The program will replace the software from Hamer Enterprise that was bought after a heated debate over which vendor to use. An independent consultant hired by the County Council recently evaluated the Hamer system and recommended against it.

"I had no confidence it could get up and running in time," consultant Beth Henkel said.

To date, $42,500 has been paid to Hamer for the assessment portion of the program, Henkel said.

Henkel said the contract with X-Soft assures the program will be functional within 30 days. The program will be funded through the assessor's reassessment fund.

Both Henkel and County Assessor John Scott said they visited other counties with X-Soft to evaluate the software.

"This is probably the best software in the state," Scott said.

The contract with X-Soft requires half of the payment due once the system becomes functional and the other half due once the software receives the necessary certification from the state. If the vendor fails to become certified, the county will receive its money back.

The issue of state certification drew a round of criticism from county officials, who condemned the state for requiring certification but failing to do so. The Department of Local Government Finance has mandated that each county have functional software by Dec. 31 that the department has certified. To date, the DLGF has not certified a single system or scheduled any of the vendor meetings necessary to do so.

"We don't know what they're waiting for," Scott said.

Officials noted the state has caused delays with the county regarding software as well as property tax bills -- a common complaint among local officials lately.

"The state is making it very difficult to get any of these (provisional bills) out in a timely fashion," said Henkel, who is a former director of the DLGF. "There is uncertainty with property taxes; there is uncertainty with software systems. A lot of that is because the state has not given us guidelines."