Believe it or not, today marks the five year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on the use of base year assessments in Allegheny County. That decision, which struck down the use of 2002 values because the court found the values violated the uniformity clause of the PA Constitution, did not end the concept of base year assessments in the state nor did it prescribe a mandated cycle of reassessments.
Since the Court basically said that base year assessments become “stale” at different points it left the question of the unconstitutionality of base year assessments and thus there would be a lot of confusion in other counties, a point made in a concurring opinion by one of the Justices. The General Assembly, seeing that 22 states require annual assessments and 26 others require periodic assessments, would be the place to remedy a solution; due to their reluctance to do so, the concurring opinion wanted to establish a statistical trigger that would allow a county to know that its base year was losing uniformity and it would be time to start a reassessment or be prepared for a court case.
Since 2010, reassessments (not just changes to pre-determined ratios) have been carried out in seven counties aside from Allegheny. Other counties (Washington, Indiana, Blair, and Warren) have reassessments in the works. In 2012, the state convened a task force on reassessments which could not bring itself to make a recommendation on a cycle or a trigger. In 2013, the state passed legislation that merged the State Equalization Board into DCED and made some changes to assessment practices to allow DCED to work with STEB on assessment issues and best practices. Our latest Brief talks about proposed school property tax reforms, neither of which would eliminate property taxes for counties and municipalities, thus leaving the assessment question in place.
And what of Allegheny County? There are no plans to undertake another reassessment unless there is a change in the state’s requirements, and appeals of assessed values by taxpayers and taxing bodies will continue on.
