Allegheny County property owners will get a second chance to challenge recent property assessments under a bill passed by County Council on Tuesday.
Taxpayers hoping to appeal their 2022 property assessments now have until March 31 to do so.
The move comes after Common Pleas Judge Alan Hertzberg ruled last fall that the county “failed to administer the property tax assessment appeal system in a just and impartial manner.”
The lawsuit was brought by plaintiffs who said they’d been treated unfairly when local governments appealed their property values. In such cases, assessors are supposed to value properties and then modify that figure with a “common level ratio.” The ratio adjusts the valuation so it is comparable to properties whose value hasn’t been gauged since the last countywide valuation, in 2012.
Hertzberg ruled that the county had been using a ratio of 81.1% — but that evidence showed “there could be no doubt that Allegheny County’s Office of Property Assessment had been ‘cooking the books.” He ordered that the newly valued property be adjusted to 63.53% of its assessed value instead.
That change could bring significant tax savings for property owners. If a property’s current fair market value is $200,000, a common level ratio of 81.1% would result in the owner paying taxes on an assessed value of $162,200. But if the common level ratio is reduced to 63.53%, the owner would pay taxes on an assessed value of $127,060.
The ordinance passed Tuesday also gives homeowners who file 2023 appeals a second chance if the common level ratio is changed again. If a court orders a different common level ratio to be used for those cases, taxpayers will have 60 days to file.
Just before the vote, Council President Pat Catena offered a blistering critique of how County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and his administration have handled property assessments.
Catena established a special committee on assessment practices last year that heard evidence from the recent lawsuit. He called the testimony “appalling” and “painful” to listen to.
Hertzberg’s ruling proved that county workers “manipulated sales data, and they did so in a fashion that resulted in artificially high property values,” Catena said.
“This isn’t a truth that anyone should be comfortable with,” he added. “It’s certainly not a truth that I’m comfortable with.” He said county officials either didn’t understand the law or didn’t care — and “Either way, they’ve conclusively demonstrated that their opinions on how assessments appeals should work are suspect, to put it gently.”
Catena said the administration raised last-minute legal concerns, but he said officials had “never offered any comment on this issue or bill up until yesterday.”
A spokesperson for Fitzgerald’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The ordinance passed with a unanimous, veto-proof vote of 15-0.
Meanwhile, an attempt to censure Allegheny County Council member Bethany Hallam failed 10-3 with two abstentions Tuesday. Hallam used a crude insult to refer to fellow jail oversight board member Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie at a meeting in early January.
DeMarco, fellow Republican Suzanne Filiaggi and Democrat Bob Macey voted in favor of the censure. Duerr, who was once nearly the subject of a censure himself, and Democrat DeWitt Walton abstained.
Walton noted that during his time on council he had “called some folks some names” when advocating for legislation he supported and said he would “do it again.”
“People that live in glass houses should not throw rocks,” he said.
But there was no disagreement about an ordinance meant to protect abortion rights in the county. The bill directs county agencies, including the district attorney and law enforcement, to deprioritize enforcement of abortion-related crimes.
There are currently no laws that criminalize seeking, or helping someone seek, an abortion or abortion-related services in Pennsylvania. But Duerr, who introduced the measure, noted that bills criminalizing abortion have been bandied about at the state and federal levels. The county measure would afford some protection if that happened, he said.
The bill was modeled in part on one introduced in Pittsburgh City Council last summer. It passed unanimously, with no objection even from Republican at-large council member Sam DeMarco, who said he was “pro-life” but opposed the idea of treating pregnant people or doctors like criminals.
Duerr, a Democrat, has also proposed a “trigger law” that would protect abortion access within the county even if it was banned statewide. That bill remains in committee.
Duerr also introduced another bill that would give voters the chance to determine whether the county should bar a person from seeking multiple county elected offices simultaneously.
The county’s current Home Rule Charter technically allows a person to run for all five county row offices and multiple County Council seats at once. And should a person run for two offices and win them, “It leaves a void,” Duerr said. Until a special election can be organized, a seat could be empty for weeks or even months, which Duerr said “leaves a burden on the voters and government.”
The issue was thrust into the spotlight recently after now-Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and U.S. Rep. Summer Lee ran for higher office and their former Allegheny County House seats and won both. That left control of the state House in limbo, and voters in their state legislative districts without representation. Special elections are slated for Feb. 7, though such contests often see lower voter turnout.
The ballot question would affect only people who ran for multiple county offices — not those who, like Davis and Lee, ran for offices at other levels of government. But Duerr said the change could make county government more stable.
Duerr’s bill, which was referred to committee, would put the question before voters in November. It wouldn’t apply to office-seekers until the next off-year election cycle.
