The reassessment earthquake is coming, and better sooner than later
Perhaps the most consequential vote of any legislative body in Allegheny County for the last decade will take place at Wednesday’s Pittsburgh Public Schools board meeting. There, members will consider whether to adopt district solicitor Ira Weiss’s resolution to authorize a lawsuit against Allegheny County that will result, with certainty, in a court-ordered countywide real estate reassessment.
The board should vote confidently in the affirmative.
Specifically, board members should not heed the pleas of state Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, to delay the move while he convenes a coalition to reform the assessment system at the state level. That absolutely needs to happen — Pennsylvania counties, like their Ohio counterparts, should all reassess together and on a regular schedule, such as every three years — but Allegheny County can’t wait for years of legislative politicking that, if past performance predicts future results, will likely go nowhere.
Allegheny County’s property tax system needs to be reset right now, even as reforms percolate through Harrisburg and the county itself. While the reassessment will not result in immediate relief for any of the county’s taxing bodies — state law prevent them from reaping a “windfall” from a reassessment — it will stabilize a taxing system that has endured 12 years of market fluctuations, not to mention artificial tampering through the botched common level ratio.
Every year that passes from the 2012 base year, the differences between market and assessed values grow, along with the havoc wreaked by appeals. The state Supreme Court has been clear that relying on a distant base year without a plan for a reassessment violates the state constitution by unfairly burdening some property owners at the expense of others.
Reassessments are painful, but they only get more painful the more time lapses between them, like earthquakes on a fault on which pressure is building. The more pressure has built up, the more dramatic the lurch to a new equilibrium. Every moment that goes by, the inevitable rupture gets worse.
Unfortunately, due to the state’s every-county-for-itself system, the choice of when to trigger the earthquake belongs to each county — and all the incentives line up against it. That’s why reassessments are usually triggered not by county leaders making a balanced decision for the common good, but by individual attorneys who decide, with their clients, that enough is enough.
That’s what’s happening now with Mr. Weiss and PPS. It makes no sense that one man can trigger the countywide earthquake. But someone has to.
PPS’s dire budget situation will not be improved by a reassessment: The district, like the city and the county, will still be on the hook for millions of dollars in tax refunds due to collapsing Downtown assessed values. The district will likely still be insolvent in 2025 without major cost-cutting reforms.
But, for PPS and taxing bodies all over the county, a reassessment will provide revenue stability that is currently lacking, as property values Downtown and elsewhere are buffeted by appeals.
As for County Executive Sara Innamorato, her office needs to make clear where she stands. During her campaign, she vacillated between strong support for a reassessment and a more cautious approach, calling for unspecified reforms as part of an assessment deal. She should head off the court case by calling for the assessment herself.
The property tax and assessment system desperately needs reform at the state and county levels. But, in the meantime, Allegheny County needs a reassessment.