Friday, June 02, 2006
Unending Assessment Pandering
“…I’m willing to do it again as long as we get this right.” This quote, from the President of County Council on the never-ending assessment debacle, is probably the understatement of the year. The administration has contorted property assessments numerous ways to “get it right”. Of course, in this case, “right” means “politically safe” and generating the fewest complaints instead of correct and accurate assessments that reflect reality and ensure fairness for taxpayers.
The quote refers to the latest episode: the Appeals Board isn’t sure what the Administration and Council mean by their base year plan.
That’s very telling. If Board members—people who are appointed to hear disputes on the County’s assessed values—do not understand the plan, how are ordinary citizens supposed to? After all, the Executive has made many public statements noting how straightforward his plan is.
After trying to cap assessment increases and “trending” increases to other factors, the Administration and Council declared 2002 as the base year and declared any sales taking place after that would be irrelevant as far as assessments are concerned. Now there is the sticky issue of schools bringing appeals on properties that sold in the base year or just before, in 2001 using comparables from that period to show under valuation. How are those to be handled?
It was predictable. Assessment pandering begets more pandering. One can see what will transpire—defenders of the “base year” plan will simply tell the Appeals Board to minimize the negative fall out of the plan. While the Board and elected officials are conferring, they might also want to figure out how they are going to correctly assess any new houses, or commercial properties, that are built in future years and how they will adjust to 2002 values.
As we have said all along, the best, though not the most politically expedient, approach, would have been to implement the original 2006 assessments as they were originally produced. Those values were closer to recent sales prices on properties in the county, and it would have transitioned the County into the annual assessment process as originally envisioned. Spending the money necessary to get the assessed values right would have gone a long way to finally fixing the assessment problem. All that has happened is that the Council and Administration have bought a little time. Eventually, this problem will come back full blown as a court case or public outrage over unfairness as taxing bodies have to continuously raise millage rates because assessments are not allowed to rise to reflect market gains.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06153/695161-85.stm
The quote refers to the latest episode: the Appeals Board isn’t sure what the Administration and Council mean by their base year plan.
That’s very telling. If Board members—people who are appointed to hear disputes on the County’s assessed values—do not understand the plan, how are ordinary citizens supposed to? After all, the Executive has made many public statements noting how straightforward his plan is.
After trying to cap assessment increases and “trending” increases to other factors, the Administration and Council declared 2002 as the base year and declared any sales taking place after that would be irrelevant as far as assessments are concerned. Now there is the sticky issue of schools bringing appeals on properties that sold in the base year or just before, in 2001 using comparables from that period to show under valuation. How are those to be handled?
It was predictable. Assessment pandering begets more pandering. One can see what will transpire—defenders of the “base year” plan will simply tell the Appeals Board to minimize the negative fall out of the plan. While the Board and elected officials are conferring, they might also want to figure out how they are going to correctly assess any new houses, or commercial properties, that are built in future years and how they will adjust to 2002 values.
As we have said all along, the best, though not the most politically expedient, approach, would have been to implement the original 2006 assessments as they were originally produced. Those values were closer to recent sales prices on properties in the county, and it would have transitioned the County into the annual assessment process as originally envisioned. Spending the money necessary to get the assessed values right would have gone a long way to finally fixing the assessment problem. All that has happened is that the Council and Administration have bought a little time. Eventually, this problem will come back full blown as a court case or public outrage over unfairness as taxing bodies have to continuously raise millage rates because assessments are not allowed to rise to reflect market gains.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06153/695161-85.stm
