The contention is as audacious as it is outrageous, if not delusional.
Here’s what Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald said Oct. 8 in presenting his no-tax-increase $959.8 million budget for 2020:
“I’m proud of the fact that … we’ve been bringing a lot of stability to people and predictability that if they invest in property in Allegheny County, whether it’s residential property or commercial property, that we’re going to hold the line on property taxes.”
While that might be Fitzgerald’s fantasy, the reality if far different considering he and his County Council toadies have balked at the kind of regularly scheduled property reassessments so crucial to “stability” and “predictability.”
The fact of the matter is that lack of regular reassessments – born of pure politics — has created gross inequities that have left many paying too much in property taxes and many others paying too little.
The former redefines “inequitable.” The latter has led to property purchasers — who most assuredly based those buys, in part, on the unfairly low listed property taxes — finding those tax values being challenged, typically by school districts, and those challenges being successful.
So, what’s “stable” and what’s “predictable” about county government, through its reassessment nonfeasance, shifting the property tax burden to the owners of properties whose values have fallen?
Nothing.
So, what’s “stable” and what’s “predictable” about county government, through its reassessment nonfeasance, establishing a climate in which local school districts are allowed to perpetuate a “Gotcha!” mentality?
Nothing.
Those who have abrogated their responsibility to mandate regular reassessments love to misrepresent reality and pander to those who believe that reassessments can only raise property taxes.
But, as has been the case before, those elected officials who have chosen political expediency and over sound governance will cost taxpayers dearly when a court of law yet again orders the county to re-establish a reassessment regimen and do the job they’ve repeatedly failed to do.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
