If the Pennsylvania Legislature spent as much time complying with the state Constitution as it does trying to circumvent it, the state of our commonwealth’s governance would be eminently better.
We refer to the latest legislative nibbling at the edges of so-called property tax “relief.” As the Post-Gazette tells it:
“Revisiting a concept that stalled in the Legislature last year, a Senate committee [has given] bipartisan support to a bill that would let Pittsburgh set up a property tax relief program for longtime resident homeowners in neighborhoods where real estate prices are rising rapidly.”
That is, in a climate in which the Legislature has not done its duty by mandating regular statewide property reassessments to meet the state Constitution’s uniform taxation mandate – and in a climate in which Allegheny County has not reassessed properties for a dozen years – only exasperating a chaotic and wholly unconstitutional property taxation system.
Thus, legislators are seeking to further pervert the broken system and make it even more unconstitutional?
Brilliant! Not!
The P-G says the bill allows the City of Pittsburgh to establish a “Longtime Owner-Occupied Property Tax Relief, or LOOP, program whether or not Allegheny County activates a similar program.”
Sen. Jay Costa, the Allegheny County Democrat who authored the measure, says the “goal is to allow longtime owner-occupants to remain in their homes in neighborhoods where values are increasing rapidly.”
“Through no fault of their own they experience potential tax increases, and this allows the City of Pittsburgh to adopt a program that will help them.”
Costa says residents in such Pittsburgh neighborhoods as East Liberty and Lawrenceville could particularly benefit.
And add yet more inequity into a system so pock-marked with inequities that it has ceased to function with any fairness. LOOP? How about loopy?
Promoting such carveouts are a slap in the face to those whose homes have declined in value yet because of no regular reassessments, they are forced to pay the freight of those with increasing values who are not paying their fair share.
And to do so when Allegheny County’s broken system is being litigated in the courts (in a lawsuit brought by Pittsburgh Public Schools) is no less than a sucker punch.
If this Legislature had any sense of fair play and legislative propriety, it would do the morally and constitutionally right thing and mandate that every county in Pennsylvania conduct regular and full property reassessments.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
