Comparing your property-tax assessment with your neighbors' could become much harder under Allegheny County Council legislation to be introduced tonight.
Citing security and privacy concerns, Councilman William Robinson, D-Hill District, is introducing a bill that would end the public's ability to search property records on the county's real estate Web site.
"If indeed 9/11 changed the world as we know it, maybe this is another example of us revisiting the issue of how much information do we need to make public," Robinson said.
The legislation would require people seeking real-estate records to file official requests either via e-mail or a letter. Such requests would have to include both the name of the owner of a property in question, plus either the address or the lot and block number of the parcel.
"Let them go and do a little work," Robinson said. "It won't be the end of the commonwealth."
The Web site (www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate) allows users to call up records for an entire street, or a particular address without knowing who owns the property. Or they can find out what property someone owns by searching the owner's name.
David Tessitor, a Pittsburgh open government advocate, sympathizes with Robinson's desire to protect privacy, but said it would deny citizens the opportunity to compare their property assessments with those on neighbors' houses so they can decide whether to file assessment appeals.
"It's essential that people have the easiest way possible to do comparisons," Tessitor said.
More than 170,000 assessment appeals were filed after Allegheny County's last reassessments in 2001 and 2002. Another revaluation is planned for the county's 550,000 properties in 2006.
County Councilman Doug Price, R-Collier, said the ability to easily search public real-estate records keeps the property tax assessment system honest. People would not have objected to assessments in such high numbers in past years, he said, if fewer people knew what their neighbors' land and houses were assessed at.
"I really don't think we would have had an outcry on the assessments if we couldn't have searched the Web site," Price said. "We have to keep the Web site accessible to everybody, including by name search."
Barry Kaufmann, executive director of Pennsylvania Common Cause, said the proposal to limit property-records access runs counter to a statewide trend for governments to provide more information online.
Governments must guard against overreacting to security and privacy concerns, otherwise the public could lose out on important information, Kaufmann said. "It's important to have a measured response to security concerns."
Robinson acknowledged his proposal could make the county Web site obsolete, but predicted amendments will be made to protect residents' ability to research assessments.
"The result may be different than what I'm attempting to do. That's why I'm looking forward to some spirited debate," he said.
Robinson is not the first to try limiting online access to county property records.
In June, county Chief Executive Dan Onorato agreed to take the names of federal, state and local judges off the Web site, citing a request from Chief U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose and security fears over the killing earlier this year of a federal judge's relatives in Chicago.
Allegheny County later denied a request from local police to have their names expunged. Robinson said officers' concerns spurred his bill.
"Once you start exempting one group, you have to exempt others," he said. "Let's exempt everyone."
Michael Havens, president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he favors the bill both to improve officers' safety and as a crime-fighting measure.
He said people in many professions, including judges, teachers, police officers and reporters, could be harmed by criminals who track them down via public records.
Former Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey, who vetoed a bill similar to Robinson's in 2001, defended residents' right to access records they paid to compile. He said has heard of no cases here of criminals using Web site records to track victims. "We've had no problems here, no evidence of that."
Onorato spokesman Kevin Evanto said the chief executive would have no position on Robinson's bill until he studies it.
