(Photo by Stephanie Strasburg. Photo illustration by Natasha Vicens/PublicSource)
Sara Innamorato could bring changed, but fairer, property taxes, while Joe Rockey would avoid a reassessment that could hike bills. Across the state, efforts to blunt the pain of reassessment got mixed reviews.
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Allegheny County’s property tax assessment system will effectively be on the November ballot as political and governmental calendars align to give voters a clear choice on the future of the problematic property levy.
Even as the system appears ripe for change amid litigation and criticism that it unfairly taxes lower-income communities and new homebuyers, voters are set to choose a new county executive for the first time in 12 years this November.
Out goes incumbent Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who vowed never to seek a countywide property reassessment and kept that promise for a decade. In January, either Democratic nominee Sara Innamorato or Republican nominee Joe Rockey will take over for Fitzgerald.
Innamorato said she would work toward regular countywide reassessments, with programs in place to protect certain groups from large tax bill increases. She said she sees the idea as “a way to create more consistency and transparency and predictability in the process, whereas what we have right now isn’t.”
Rockey said he opposes a countywide reassessment altogether.
“What a countywide reassessment is going to do is raise the taxes of people who are on a fixed income living in their homes in Allegheny County,” Rockey said. “And that is not in the best interest of our county, to be forcing people, retired individuals … out of their homes because their income didn’t go up but their taxes went up.”
In neighborhoods like Mount Washington, Lawrenceville and the South Side, where property values have surged, a decision not to reassess would lock in the current situation in which neighbors often pay starkly different tax bills, while a decision to reassess would hike the levy for some and shave it for others.
Reassessing would also have big implications for municipalities and school districts that now rely on property tax appeals to raise revenue, and some of which face losses as the appeals math shifts.
The experiences of the state’s biggest municipal government, the combined city-county-school district of Philadelphia, suggest that any decision would be fraught, but that there are tools — some new and untried — to make property tax changes less jarring for residents.
Maddie Gioffre (right) and Shaquille Charles stand in front of their Wilkinsburg home on April 5, 2022. The two purchased the home in early 2020 and were promptly subjected to an assessment appeal. They are the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the way Allegheny County calculates property assessments after appeals. (Photo by Lindsay Dill/PublicSource)
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