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County delays property evaluation process
There were at least two developments on the property tax reassessment front Wednesday, a week after the state Supreme Court weighed in on a case from Allegheny County.
In the morning, the Washington County commissioners delayed a request for proposals from firms that would perform a tax reassessment that could potentially affect all property owners in the county.
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"It is slightly evolving," White said Wednesday afternoon. "I don't want to say too much. Language is being discussed as we speak."
White represents Oakdale, communities in South Fayette Township and the part of McDonald Borough that lies in Allegheny County along with parts of Washington and Beaver counties.
"I fully intend to reach out to the Washington County commissioners. I believe this is something they can get behind and something they can support," White said.
"It's not a question of should or shouldn't there be a reassessment. It's how to do it in a way that's fair. A reassessment has the potential to be a back-door tax increase and that's what we're trying to prevent."
The commissioners discussed their consensus to not immediately seek assessors' proposals during and after a closed session on legal matters with county solicitor Lynn DeHaven.
At Wednesday's agenda meeting, when Nancy Bielawski, purchasing director, reported on advertising for the assessment proposals, Commission Chairman Larry Maggi said, "We better put that on hold."
According to a 53-page opinion from the state Supreme Court, Allegheny County must conduct a property tax reassessment for next year. The court stopped short of ruling a county statute that sets 2002 values as the baseline for taxation was illegal.
Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato took his county's predicament to the state Legislature, and the commissioners in Washington County are taking a wait-and-see attitude for at least a few weeks.
In a court case brought by the Washington and McGuffey school districts, the county has until Sept. 30 to begin the reassessment process.
None of the commissioners seemed hopeful that the Legislature would come up with a solution.
"It's a broken system, and the only one that can fix it is the Legislature," said Commission Vice Chairman Bracken Burns.
"It can only be uniform until it is made uniform at the state level. Nothing is going to change in my opinion."
Maggi said the legislators must enact property tax reform, something that his board and the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania has been advocating for years.
"And it's just fallen on deaf ears," he said. "The real problem is funding education with property tax. That's the bottom line."
Commissioner Diana L. Irey said, "Getting the Legislature to act is more difficult than one might think.
"What we're facing is a court order to begin the process by Oct. 1 of this year. We will comply with the court order and hope that the Legislature will act. If the Legislature does act, realistically, I do not see a change for several years. We do not have that time to wait, according to the court order handed down by Judge Debbie O'Dell Seneca."
The judge, last November, allowed that new legislation could affect the county's position on a tax reassessment, which could cost as much as $4 million.
Washington and McGuffey school districts filed suit in January, asking the court to order the commissioners to embark on a property tax reassessment throughout the county.
The county's last reassessment, completed in 1979, took effect in 1981. It resulted from a court case brought by Peters Township School District.
