When will enough be enough for Allegheny County’s broken property assessment system, one that appears to devolve into an ever-deeper cluster cluck by the week?
Allegheny County has – for purely political reasons – refused to conduct a countywide property reassessment for nearly a decade. And the last one was court-ordered because it had become such a gross violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution’s taxation uniformity clause.
That lack of regular reassessments – there should have been three additional ones by now – has led to what we can only call a free-lance operation by taxing bodies – mostly school districts – which is a direct result of the pols’ clear decision to place their own political hides over the rule of law.
The latest manifestation of this deep, yet wholly unavoidable mess, comes from the county’s Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review.
As the Post-Gazette reports it, the board “has stopped scheduling hearings this year in the wake of litigation over the number that will be used to determine the value at which a property will be taxed.”
Board members “won’t schedule hearings on cases that have yet to be heard until the courts decide what common level ratio should be used in those proceedings, solicitor David Montgomery” told the P-G.
That decision was made after Pittsburgh Public Schools appealed a ruling last month by county Common Pleas Judge Alan Hertzberg that set the ratio, or CLR, at 63.5 percent for 2022.
Which means no hearings in the interim for 3,372 appeals still pending before the assessments and review board.
But, again, this dog and pony show would not be happening had Allegheny County officials heeded the state constitutional mandate for a uniform property taxation regimen.
Actions have consequences, we are all taught – or at least should have been taught – as little children.
But that adults directing this property assessment cluster cluck who should know better obviously don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to admit that the consequences of inaction in this matter are just as bad, if not worse, and inexcusable.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
