One can tell how unserious a government entity is about prudent governance when its default position is to advocate for higher taxes. Welcome to executive branch of Allegheny County government.
Not only has Chief Executive Sara Innamorato been unyielding in her push for a nearly 50 percent increase in property taxes – with virtually no consultation with County Council, according to radio reports — her administration keeps pushing for Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) to raise its share of the property tax as well.
Its latest entreaty came in a court filing last week in a lawsuit in which it hopes to thwart PPS’ attempt to force the county to conduct its first countywide reassessment in a dozen years.
The county not only continues to argue that the school district does not have standing as a taxing body vs. as a taxed body — never mind that prior lawsuits elsewhere in Pennsylvania have established taxing-body standing – it says PPS has a ready remedy:
It can raise school taxes.
Well, isn’t that special – one tax-and-spend-happy government entity imploring another taxing body to join the spendthrifty class.
But as PPS notes in its latest court filing, according to the Post-Gazette:
“It found ammunition for [having legal standing] in the 2009 lawsuit filed to force the county to do its last reassessment. In that case, the county acknowledged, according to the brief, that ‘taxing authorities have a substantial interest in the county’s handling of its system.’”
And the county also has the temerity to argue, in its own competing brief, that events that led to the PPS lawsuit – pandemic-induced falling taxable values of large Downtown buildings that forced PPS to issue large refund after large refund — “does not implicate the county in some unconstitutional property assessment scheme.”
But that’s daft. It’s already established position to not conduct regular property reassessments in contravention of the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniform Taxation Clause already, and fully, implicates it in the very scheme it denies.
Consider the county’s hubris squared.
This dog-and-pony show must end. And so must the piecemeal efforts to get Allegheny County to do the right and constitutional thing. It’s long past time for the state Legislature to do what the clear majority of states do. And that’s to mandate regular statewide property reassessments.
Time to let the doggies and ponies rest, ladies and gentlemen.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
