On facing a court-ordered reassessment, that is. Members of County Council, including the past president of Council, and the County Executive have long argued that Allegheny County was being singled out and treated unfairly on reassessment policy. Bear in mind that the County tried to institute a cap system, which went to court and was tossed out, and then instituted a base year plan that went through the courts (all the way to the PA Supreme Court) and was tossed out. Apparently a court ruling against you on a suit constitutes being "singled out".
Right to the south of Allegheny County in Washington County a similar situation where the courts heard a lawsuit concerning assessments and ruled that one had to be undertaken is playing out. The state House Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing there yesterday to discuss the impending reassessment and how it, as well as Allegheny’s, would be forestalled if a statewide moratorium on court-ordered reassessments were passed.
Testifiers at the meeting included the former County Council president, the same official who was quoted in a January 21, 2011 newspaper article as stating "…it is unfair that Allegheny County should be the only county in the state ordered to do a reassessment". If this were accurate, how is it that this official appeared at a hearing in a county that has been likewise ordered to do a reassessment by the courts?
A report commissioned at the behest of the General Assembly even reviews six court cases in five Pennsylvania counties from 1991-1998 in places where a base year was used. When these cases are taken into consideration it is even more difficult to argue that Allegheny County is being segmented into a class of its own.
