Give counties more control

Where Augusta County property owners wade and supervisors spare one refuse to go, Dan Onorato has ventured before to results decidedly mixed. The chief executive of Allegheny County, which encompasses the City of Pittsburgh, responded in a fashion many taxpayers here would prefer when a reassessment four years ago increased residential values by an average of 20 percent. Onorato decided to rely on 2002 values rather than the 2005 reassessment. A storm ensued that still rumbles today.

A group of property owners charged that Onorato’s so-called base-year plan cheated property owners whose values had declined over four years and violated the uniformity clause of the state Constitution. A judge agreed and ordered the county to conduct a new reassessment by March 2009. The county ignored the decree and filed an appeal. Arguments were heard in the state Supreme Court last fall, several years after the reassessment wars began.

Two elements of this case are especially intriguing. The phrase “base year” in the sense it’s being used in Pennsylvania is not part of the lingo here. Then-Gov. Dick Thornburgh and the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law in 1982 allowing counties to set a “base year,” giving elected officials leave to essentially freeze values, the option Onorato exercised and other counties frequently have used.

The second element is the one that landed Onorato in court: Base-year opponents say the poor shoulder a larger share of the tax burden while more affluent property owners get a break.

In Augusta, the scenario is somewhat reversed. Average property values in Craigsville are the lowest among eight magisterial county districts, but they increased by more than 30 percent, slightly higher than the countywide average residential jump of 27.7 percent. In Beverly Manor and Wayne, values ranked second and third respectively but average increases in those two districts lagged behind the rest of the county.

What this means is that in Augusta, switching to a base year like Allegheny, or rolling back to 2005, would shield property owners in a poorer district such as Craigsville from carrying a larger share of the tax burden springing from reassessment increases. People in wealthier districts such as North River – where reassessments spiked by an average of 47 percent – would win, too. This explains the momentum that has built behind Churchville lawyer Francis Chester’s petition drive demanding a rollback.

If supervisors comply with Chester’s call, they face hammers, one plastic and another made of raw iron. Failing to comply with state code requiring a reassessment every four years in Augusta will cost the county its share of annual profits from liquor sales. That amounts to less than $40,000, pennies for a county with an annual budget of $176 million. The real concern is that if the state took the county to court, a judge likely would respond by ordering supervisors to enforce the reassessment. Rollbacks by all accounts are mostly uncharted territory here with no legal precedent to back them.

A bill authored by state Sen. Emmett Hanger and passed by the House and Senate – it needs only the signature of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to become law – provides some hope for relief. It would allow Augusta supervisors to opt for reassessments every five or six years instead of every four.

That could lay a path out of the woods for county supervisors, but it would not eliminate the possibility of another reassessment battle later.

What laws in all places seek on the subject of reassessments is the vital goal of uniformity, a standard aimed at ensuring that the tax load is shared fairly and proportionally. But extraordinary economic times like these show the need for greater local control, which can only be had when elected officials have more freedom to operate, under necessary strictures. Uniformity, in other words, is needed, but it is not all that is needed.