Issue Summary (Updated January 2011)
Property Assessments

The Issue:

Property assessments are the most controversial, divisive, and time-consuming issue faced by Allegheny County government. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the County's base year plan violates the PA Constitution, the County is in the process of undertaking an assessment for 2012. 

What We Know:

Though the County, municipalities, and school districts levy property taxes, the County has sole responsibility for making property assessments and hearing appeals. It has been a source of heated political controversy in the County for a long time and only became more pronounced after the County was mandated by a court decision to perform a County wide reassessment. Following that reassessment in 2001, the County performed another one in 2002, then there was a lull until a reassessment was to take place in 2006. That would be the last until annual assessments would begin in 2009.

That was the plan, until the County Executive began to have concerns with the assessed values produced by the 2006 assessment. Instead of allowing the assessments to go out as planned and let appeals take care of problems, a plan was hatched to “cap” increases to a maximum of 4 percent, while letting decreases go without a limit. That plan was thrown out by the courts. After trying other approaches, the plan was to use the 2002 assessments as a base year with no further reassessments. The problems with this approach were readily evident: Allegheny County would be using a base year that they came up with retroactively instead of prospectively, the 2002 values were based on comparable sales instead of construction cost (which would be the standard for future construction), places where values are rising are rewarded while places where values are falling are punished, and the Executive did not like the 2002 values when he campaigned.

The Supreme Court decided on the issue in the spring of 2009, ruling that the base year plan violated the uniformity clause of the PA Constitution.  The Court remanded the matter to the Court of Common Pleas to come up with a reasonable time frame for a reassessment.  After several hearings, the County began the steps of moving toward an assessment for 2012.   

Recommendations:

Looking forward, the onus is on the County to keep their word that they will complete the assessment in a timely manner and within acceptable industry standards.  The state will likely deliberate on the statewide assessment system after the completion of a study on property assessments.   What should the state consider?  Perhaps adopting a reasessment schedule for all counties so that a base year cannot stay in place indefinitely and adopting a statistical test to determine when assessments have violated the uniformity clause.