It is the bureaucratic mess that keeps on taking. And it’s long past time to put a stop to it.
An Armstrong County Common Pleas judge, hearing a case that no Allegheny County judge would touch, has ruled that Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) has no legal standing to attempt to force Allegheny County to do what it is constitutionally bound to do — conduct regular property reassessments for taxing purposes.
PPS says it will appeal the ruling.
As he telegraphed during legal arguments, Judge Kenneth Valasek ruled that PPS, as a taxing body, does not have the legal standing to force a reassessment that those taxed have.
Furthermore, he noted the school district could easily remedy its plaint by raising taxes. Which is exactly what Allegheny County did to, in part, counter a plethora of office high-rise valuation declines won through appeals.
While Valasek did not rule on the constitutionality of what clearly is a violation of the state Constitution’s uniform taxation clause, the very action that he said was permissible for PPS to remedy its claims is the subject of a different lawsuit by a Churchill homeowner.
Flavia Laun argues that Allegheny County’s property assessment system “does not accurately reflect market fluctuations that have occurred over the past 13 years.”
Flavia Laun’s lawsuit faults Innamorato because she did raise tax rates without first addressing what the lawsuit calls “mass, systematic, non-uniform assessments.”
As the Post-Gazette reported it:
“The lawsuit cites last year’s 36 percent hike in the county’s millage rate, contending that rather than requiring under-assessed property owners to pay their fair share, the county ‘has simply chosen to shift their tax liability over to everyone else in the form of higher taxes.’”
The county has not formally responded to the Laun lawsuit.
It is quite clear, and has been for years, that the only constitutionally equitable remedy for this mess is to conduct a reassessment post-haste, then do so every three years.
And given that Allegheny County, the state Legislature and the courts themselves have been so perennially loath to do the right thing and institute and/or order a regular property assessment regimen, it’s high time that the state Supreme Court invoke one of two powers it holds:
The first would be its “Power of Extraordinary Jurisdiction,” in which it can hear any case pending in a lower court.
The second would be to invoke its “King’s Bench Power,” in which the high court can hear any case it so choses, pending or not.
The time for nibbling around the edges is over. The time is now for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to intercede and to order regular statewide reassessments to prevent the state Constitution from becoming a dead letter in such matters.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
