On April 29th of this year, the SupremeCourt of Pennsylvania ruled Allegheny County’s baseyear plan unconstitutional and sent the matter "to the[County] court to determine Allegheny County’s progress in executing a countywide reassessment and to set a realsitic timeframe for its completion".
"Realistic" will be the key operative term to be hashed out over the coming weeks. Judge Wettick stated that "unless the parties are able to agree (on a time frame and method of reassessment) a hearing will be held". Not surprisingly, the County stated it will need "two years" in order to meet the Supreme Court’s requirement of a thorough reassessment. No doubt the County is holding out hope that the state legislature will take action on a bill that would-purely coincidentally of course-institute a two year moratorium of court ordered reassessments while the state figures out the best way to overhaul the system of property taxes and assessments. That bill is currently in a Senate committee.
How far we have come since the "uniform and accurate" assessments the former Chief Assessor believed were in place in 2005. Now we enter the fall as many taxpayers prepare to open up their checkbooks to pay their school taxes, based upon the County’s base year assessments. As we asked in a previous entry, what happens if a taxpayer refuses to pay taxes due to the Supreme Court’s decision?
