Enough really is enough:
Yet another lawsuit has been filed challenging Allegheny County’s — and now, the state’s — patently unconstitutional property tax assessment system.
The latest in a long string of lawsuits by varying parties – taxpayers and property tax recipients – was filed last week in Commonwealth Court by a group calling itself the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, Inc.
The lawsuit, which names as defendants, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Attorney General Dave Sunday, makes the fundamental and compelling argument that the current property assessment system violates the Pennsylvania Constitution.
As the Post-Gazette reports it:
“Mon Valley Unemployed is a nonprofit that has about 450 members, including low-income homeowners throughout Western Pennsylvania, ‘whose homes are systematically over-assessed due to the use of the frozen base-year assessment scheme in their counties,’ according to the lawsuit.”
The P-G says “the lawsuit calls on the governor and attorney general to issue an injunction requiring counties statewide to conduct reassessments statewide, saying the current environment is inequitable and unfair for many homeowners, along with posing challenges to local taxing authorities in collecting the needed revenue for critical services.”
That is, it’s a cluster-cluck.
How many times must we go down this road of county and state officials publicly nose-thumbing and raspberry-blowing the state Constitution’s uniform taxation mandate before a controlling legal authority puts a halt to this long-running and 100 percent lawless dog-and-pony show?
Thus, we renew our call today, first made in February:
“[G]iven that Allegheny County, the state Legislature and the courts themselves have been so perennially loath to do the right thing and institute and/or order a regular property assessment regimen, it’s high time that the state Supreme Court invoke one of two powers it holds:
“The first would be its “Power of Extraordinary Jurisdiction,” in which it can hear any case pending in a lower court.
“The second would be to invoke its “King’s Bench Power,” in which the high court can hear any case it so choses, pending or not (emphasis added).
“The time for nibbling around the edges is over. The time is now for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to intercede and to order regular statewide reassessments to prevent the state Constitution from becoming a dead letter in such matters.”
Simply put, governments’ gross dereliction of duty must be stopped. The state Supreme Court has that power, times two, to do so.
Let’s get on with it, Supremes.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
