Well.
Not chastened in the least by a property tax assessment mess that he refuses to own (but now does, fully), Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald says, as the Post-Gazette reports it, there will be no countywide reassessment before he leaves office at the end of his third term in 2023.
“I haven’t done one and I don’t plan on doing one over the last year of my administration,” he said.
As per the P-G:
“Not doing them, he maintained, has provided property owners with predictability and stability in knowing what their tax bill is going to be year in and year out.”
That’s absolutely daft, if not Orwellian. And he knows better. It’s intellectual dishonesty at its worst. Just look at the abject mess, gross inequities, spot assessments, instability and unpredictability in a system without a full reassessment for a decade (and then, only by court order).
Still Fitzgerald offers up this gem:
“When we had reassessments you would have some property taxes double, triple and even more and that is a disincentive for investment coming into the county,” he said.
But there’s an anti-windfall provision that requires taxing bodies to adjust millage rates. Yes, those not paying their share saw their property taxes rise. But others, who have been paying far more than their “fair share” – and carrying those paying far less than they should — find proper and just relief in lowered valuations.
Fitzgerald continues that since the average median sales price of a home in Allegheny County has increased from $100,000 to close to $250,000, “the proof is in the pudding that there has been investment, there has been an increase in our population and there has been an increase in new construction,” he told the P-G.
“And again, putting instability into a property tax system, I think, is going to be detrimental to our economic growth.”
That is flat-out delusional. The county (and the region’s) population long has been about as flat as Fitzgerald must think the Earth is.
Economic growth?! He might want to do a quick check with the county’s (and the region’s) Department of Lagging Economic Indicators. “Growth” here badly lags comparable counties/metros and the national experience.
Good grief, it’s not regular reassessments that cause Fitzgerald’s “instability” and “unpredictability,” it’s in no small part his leading the way against reassessments — as he wholly misrepresents their effects.
Let us put that last statement in another, more accurate way:
That steadfast refusal to reassess – and on a regular basis – is a gross violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniform Taxation Clause.
That Fitzgerald, with no apologies, continues to firmly plant his thumb to his nose and furiously wag his fingers at the state Constitution and taxpayers must no longer be abided.
Simply put, it’s the kind of lawlessness that has led local taxing jurisdiction after local taxing jurisdiction to free-lance the reassessment process and left far too many property owners either skating away with far too low assessments and others sucking for air with assessments that are far too high.
Two words: For shame.
Colin McNickle is director of marketing and communications at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
