Who Is Dan Smith? The Democrat for Douglas County Treasurer

Dan Smith's campaign began with a complaint that is easy to verify. "Douglas County residents and taxpayers deserve to know how their property taxes compare to each other and where their property taxes go. That doesn't exist today."

So he built it. His campaign publishes a tool that takes an address and tells you how your rate compares with the county median. That is the candidacy in one gesture: a finance guy who thinks the office is a reporting problem.

What the job actually is

Per the county, the office bills and collects property taxes using the assessor's valuations and the mill levies certified by roughly 300 taxing authorities, then disburses the money back to them. The school district is typically about half of a bill. The office also runs the county's banking and manages its investment portfolio under state statute and the county investment policy, "with the focus being safety and liquidity before yield." The treasurer is also the county's Public Trustee, handling releases and foreclosures of deeds of trust under Title 38.

On the vacancy: David Gill was elected to a second term in November 2022 and his term runs to January 2027, but neither the county's elected officials page nor his county biography says whether he is term limited or has chosen not to run again. He is not on the sample ballot, which makes it an open seat. We leave the reason where the county left it.

The resume

Smith's site is almost entirely resume, the mirror image of his opponent's. He claims 20 plus years in corporate finance and governance at wealth management firms "like Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley." He says he has managed budgets of a half billion dollars and handled financial reporting for more than one trillion dollars of investment assets, for "some of the most demanding customers in the world: private sector investors."

Before finance, a stranger set of jobs. He was a teacher, he worked for the FBI, and he worked with Filipino street children in Manila, where he says he helped establish the first hospital based center for treating child sexual abuse in Southeast Asia. He played NCAA soccer and has spent ten years as a soccer coach, parent and referee, which he argues is more relevant than it sounds: know the rules, enforce them, stay impartial.

Eight years inside the school district's books

This is the part of his record that is checkable and local. Smith says he has spent eight years advising the Douglas County School District Board of Education across two committees. He is currently co-chair of the Fiscal Oversight Committee, where he says he has warned about financial risks and raised transparency concerns around a $1 billion budget, and where the committee provides citizen oversight of more than $300 million in bond reserves and general fund balances. On the Mill Bond Oversight Committee he says he helped oversee more than $750 million of capital spending.

That is unpaid citizen oversight of the kind of public money a treasurer holds, in the largest entity the treasurer distributes to.

The tool

The Dan4DougCo Tax Transparency Tool takes an address or a parcel number and returns an estimated tax amount, an effective rate against the county median, and a breakdown across school, metro, fire and other districts. It covers 157,557 properties across 615 tax districts for the 2025 tax year, and says its valuation data comes from the Douglas County Assessor's Office.

It is a campaign product, not an official one, and voters should read it that way. It is also the only thing either candidate has shipped in this race.

"Treasurer isn't a political job, and it shouldn't be a partisan job." Smith, on his campaign's front page.

The argument

Smith's pitch rests on a line that is a risk in this county. "This job should be about who has the skills and qualifications to collect and safeguard taxpayer money. I'm not a career politician. I'm a finance guy."

His MythBusters page does the same work his opponent's priorities pages do, correcting what voters blame the treasurer for: the office does not set rates or values, and does not oversee county spending, which belongs largely to the appointed director of finance. His own investment framing, a graphic he says he built himself, orders the priorities as protect the money, keep cash available, make it grow. That is the county's safety, liquidity and yield ordering in plain English, which means both candidates have landed in the same place on the one discretionary part of the job.

What is not there

No endorsements page. No Ballotpedia entry. The site's news section still carries unedited Wix placeholder posts about fintech startups and smart wearables.

More substantively, there is no stated position on the tax lien sale or the Public Trustee duties, the two places where this office touches people at their worst moment. His opponent has written five commitments on each; Smith has written none.

More: the Dietz vs Smith race page, the ballot guide, and every race and measure on your ballot. We do not endorse candidates. Campaigns can send corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.