Public hearings have begun on a long overdue Allegheny County proposal to mandate property reassessments every three years. Wonders never cease, we guess.
We, of course, applaud the council’s epiphany. For we long have advocated for such regular reassessments, both as a matter of law and fairness. The mess the failure to reassess has left behind is as deep as it is wide: Gross inequities in taxation, lawsuits and appeals galore over the broken system and a hardly welcoming calling card to anyone or any business considering a move to Allegheny County.
And that’s not only a moral issue, it’s unconstitutional, violating the commonwealth’s uniform taxation mandate, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last ruled in April 2009.
It’s worth repeating a few key passages of that 17-year-old ruling, simply to remind how derelict county and state officials have been for so long.
“[T]he Allegheny County scheme, which permits a single base-year assessment to be used indefinitely, has resulted in significant disparities in the ratio of assessed value to current actual value in Allegheny County.
“The disparity is most often to the disadvantage of owners of properties in lower-value neighborhoods where property values often appreciate at a lower rate than in higher-value neighborhoods, if they appreciate at all,” the high court said.
But, the ruling also stressed, the state Legislature is the “appropriate place in the first instance to fashion a more comprehensive and soundly constitutional [property assessment] scheme.”
That, however, does not preclude counties from acting on their own.
Outrageously, though, too many people at too many levels of government for far too long engaged in the practice of gross dereliction of duty in pursuit of political expediency.
And as culpable as they all are in perpetuating this mess, that the courts allowed Allegheny County and the state Legislature to not only rationalize – but essentially ignore – the spirit and letter of the state Constitution is unconscionable.
Allegheny County Council has a golden opportunity to do the right thing, righting a grievous public policy wrong. It’s past time to get this done.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcncikle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
