Some municipal officials in Lackawanna County in Northeast PA are urging the county commissioners to conduct a reassessment, the first one in nearly fifty years. We wrote previously that the oldest reassessment year in the state, 1958 in Blair County, underwent a reassessment recently. Franklin County (1961), Lackawanna (1968), Crawford (1969), and Butler (1969) are counties with base years stretching back to the decade of the 1960s.
One county commissioner urged one of the municipalities to also pass a resolution supporting a school tax shift through an increase in personal income and sales tax, a piece of legislation that has been considered before but has not been introduced in this legislative session. The commissioner suggested that with no school taxes a “…reassessment would be more palatable”, which may or may not be the case. School districts are still required to reduce millage rates to comply with new reassessed values, but the school tax bill typically comprises the largest portion of the total (county, municipality, school). If the commissioners are relying on school tax elimination as a precursor to conducting a reassessment they may be waiting for many more years. But at least this commissioner did realize that just eliminating school taxes would not bring an end to the need for a reassessment.
Two members of the municipal council voted against the resolution due to fear that a reassessment would cause a tax increase for many. Again, that depends on the change in property value relative to the change in overall value for the three taxing bodies, assuming tax rates stay at the revenue neutral level. But big jumps in tax bills for properties after millage rates are adjusted to revenue neutral rates indicate those properties were underassessed.
There will always be plenty of reasons officials will cite to avoid conducting a reassessment. Especially important in a county where five decades has passed is the education effort to let taxpayers know how to estimate what will happen with their taxes and that a change in value of ten does not mean taxes will increase by a factor of ten.
