So, let’s whistle past the graveyard some more, shall we?
Allegheny County and Chief Executive Sara Innamorato are urging a Common Pleas Court judge to throw out a lawsuit by Pittsburgh Public Schools that demands a countywide reassessment.
As the Post-Gazette reports it, the 18-page filing claims the school district lacks standing to pursue such litigation and already has myriad, existing remedies in its quiver to address the matter.
But seldom has county government gone to such inventive machinations to shrink from its duty to abide by the state Constitution’s uniform taxation mandate.
The county’s legal retort not only haughtily implores the school district to continue to apply more baling wire to the long-broken property tax assessment system, it questions whether a reassessment will do anything to fix the now massively out-of-whack regimen that has, by dereliction, codified gross inequities.
Simply put, the county has refused to do its constitutional duty to maintain uniform taxation, repeatedly. And it will be a cold day in proverbial hell before it allows those harmed by its nonfeasance – or has its recidivist inaction now risen to misfeasance? – to challenge such foundational constitutional nose-thumbing.
Past being prologue, we doubt Allegheny County will ever get its act together regarding property assessments. And that’s even with talk of the state Legislature at long last pulling its head out of the sand and passing a mandate for regular statewide reassessments.
We can fully imagine the ever-inventive and responsibility-dodging Allegheny County government attempting to argue that the Legislature itself has no standing. And that could set up a quite interesting state Supreme Court battle.
Allegheny County officials have chosen to keep doing the exact wrong thing regarding property assessments. And in the process, it keeps costing taxpayers even more — while keeping members of the legal bar gainfully employed.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
