With all due apologies to the “Captain” character in the classic Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke,” what we have here in Allegheny County with the growing property assessment mess is a failure to govern.
“Some politicians, you just can’t reach,” the Captain might say.
The story is oft’ told, and has grown horribly old, how several iterations and levels of government have, for more than a decade, kept kicking the regular property reassessment regimen can down the road as they whistled past the graveyard on the road to perdition in the name of political expediency.
Yes, that’s a mouthful to read. But with all due intent. For it shows the total nonfeasance, discombobulation and bumfuzzery of even state pols in doing the right thing, a “thing” prescribed in the state Constitution.
And the boomerang of that failure to regularly reassess properties for tax-collection purposes – in the name of uniform taxation — has come back to kerplunk the rear ends of our “leaders” who so steadfastly have buried their heads in the sand.
Simply put, there’s absolutely no excuse for such a gross dereliction of duty.
As the Post-Gazette’s Mark Belko reported last week, “three Downtown skyscrapers, including U.S. Steel Tower and PNC’s headquarters, have won huge reductions in their property assessments, with officials predicting that it could be the part of a wave of cuts that could upend the local tax base.”
To wit, Belko reports “the assessment on the Tower at PNC Plaza, the bank’s Wood Street nerve center, has been cut by more than half, from $147.2 million to $72.3 million for 2022 and 2023, a reduction of $74.8 million.”
“At U.S. Steel Tower, the city’s tallest building, the assessment has been slashed by $81.2 million from $233.2 million to $151.9 million for 2022 and by $91.6 million to $141.5 million for last year.
“And at Three Gateway Center, where the owner is mulling a residential conversion, the assessment for 2022 and 2023 has been hacked by nearly $27.2 million from $62.7 million to $35.5 million,” Belko reported.
And it’s just the beginning, as the P-G further notes:
“In all, about 55 commercial buildings are under appeal, the Post-Gazette found last year, including other skyline stalwarts like PPG Place, the Union Trust Building, EQT Plaza, Liberty Center, the Grant Building, 525 William Penn Place, the former Alcoa headquarters, and the old Gimbel’s and Kaufmann’s department stores.
“Combined, the 55 properties had an assessed value of roughly $1.5 billion. The status of other appeals could not be determined Wednesday.”
Observers have been quick to blame high office vacancies spawned by the pandemic and repeated manipulation of the methodology used in an attempt to make up for a lack of regular reassessments as the reason for the en masse appeals.
But very anemic metrics – led by a chronic population and jobs malaise that pre-existed the pandemic and persist today – already had led to high office vacancy rates. Using the pandemic as full cover is a convenient way to cover up the problems that had already long existed.
At least some public officials, though far too few, are being forced to admit that the only solution is to have a regular countywide reassessment plan.
That will reset all real estate values essentially frozen since 2012, force those paying too much and those paying too little to pay their fair share. Yes, some will pay more. But others will pay less. And no-windfall provisions will keep the county’s reassessed “take” in check.
But, and make no mistake, there is a giant mess to come in advance of any full reassessment that is no sure thing to come. (And, even if it does, it will take a series of reassessments to fix what politically expedient pols broke).
There will be appeals. There will be tax hikes. There will be lawsuits. And if past is prologue, there will be a court-ordered reassessment. And more lawsuits. And more finger-pointing.
But this mess cannot truly begin to be rectified until the state Legislature finally performs its constitutional duty and mandates that every Pennsylvania county conduct reassessments on a regular basis.
And make no mistake, also, that this mess was fully avoidable and the reassessment solution, though difficult, was, and is, fully manageable. If only there were the political will.
Such political failures that lead to near-intractable moral failures in sound governance have been tolerated for far too long. And, left to rot further, endangers the rule of law, mocks sound public policy and leads to no less than total moral turpitude.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
