Weeks of worry and frustration that Allegheny County home and business owners were about to get hit with higher property tax bills this year evaporated on Thursday with a judge's order.
Common Pleas Senior Judge R. Stanton Wettick ruled property assessments will remain the same this year and granted a request to delay using new, controversial values until 2013 to calculate tax bills.
"I think it's too risky," Wettick, who is overseeing the court-ordered reassessment, said at a Downtown hearing. "School districts could lose a lot of money."
Pittsburgh Public Schools made the request, fearing a deluge of successful assessment appeals could drive down the city's tax base in the middle of the year and blow a hole in the district's budget after it adjusted tax rates to meet state anti-windfall laws.
Wettick's order will apply to municipalities and school districts countywide once the reassessment is complete. Wesley K. Graham, the county's acting chief assessment officer, told Wettick his team has 15,000 to 20,000 properties remaining to evaluate.
"People can breathe a sign of relief and be happy for one more year," said County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who vowed to keep fighting what he views as an unfair and inaccurate reassessment system.
Wettick vowed not to grant any more delays.
Fitzgerald, a Squirrel Hill Democrat who took office last week, said he won't interfere with Wettick's order to restart the appeals process for Pittsburgh and Mt. Oliver property owners, who were the first to receive their reassessment notices.
Fitzgerald last week declared the reassessments "null and void," and shut down the informal appeals process that had begun days earlier. Wettick said city homeowners have until Feb. 24 to file appeals of their reassessed values. He said hearings must begin by Feb. 1.
On Tuesday, he ordered county employees to comply with his court's directives, even if it meant defying Fitzgerald. If they disobey Wettick, they could be held in contempt of court.
Deadlines for the rest of the county will be announced later. Officials will decide next week how to handle new assessment notices.
Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl complained that suburban property owners will get more time to put together appeals. He also said he fears city taxpayers will lose out on a chance to appeal in informal hearings.
Fitzgerald said he did not know if informal appeals would resume.
Inconsistent and inflated assessments in the notices sent to city and Mt. Oliver property owners caused anger and confusion. The reassessment raised the overall value of properties in the city school district by 58 percent.
The delay eases fears among officials about being forced to mail two tax bills -- one before the reassessment was finished and one after.
"We didn't want to send out duplicate tax bills, and we wanted an opportunity for residents to know how they're going to be affected and what they want to do," Hampton Manager Christopher Lochner said. "It just makes it a better budgeting situation."
He said the delay could make it easier for communities to make up their budgets for the next year.
If the county certifies and sends out new assessment values over the summer, residents could decide if they want to appeal, and then the municipality could see how many people are appealing and make a more accurate budget prediction, Lochner said.
City homeowners preparing to fight their reassessments welcomed the extra time.
"This whole thing was being rushed at the end, and we didn't have a handle on whether taxes would go up or down," said Jeff Brandau, 55, of Manchester, who plans to appeal a fivefold increase in his home's assessment from $80,000 to $430,000. "It's a great decision. Let's just slow down and get this thing right."
Don Driscoll, an attorney who represents the group that sued to force the reassessment, said he is unhappy with the judge's decision.
"It's another year of unconstitutional taxation," Driscoll said.
The state Supreme Court said Allegheny County's 2002-based property values are so outdated that it would be unconstitutional to use them.
Driscoll believes school districts can estimate how much assessment appeals would impact their budget and account for it when they lower their tax rates to comply with state anti-windfall laws.
The delay will mean many city property owners -- 65 percent by some estimates -- won't see a property tax decrease this year, said Robert Max Junker, another attorney pressing to complete reassessment.
"It's a double whammy. They don't get a cut in their school district and city taxes, and they get hit with the 21 percent county tax increase," he said.
County Council authorized a 1-mill tax increase last month, a move Fitzgerald endorsed.
Fitzgerald said he will spend his first year in office lobbying state Legislators and Gov. Tom Corbett to impose a moratorium on court-mandated reassessments until a law that handles assessments uniformly across the state is passed.
He sent a two-page letter to every school district and municipality in Allegheny County urging officials to pass resolutions that oppose the reassessment.
"We may have won the first battle, but I am under no impression that the war is anywhere near over," Fitzgerald said.
