A top Allegheny County Republican Party official yesterday lambasted Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, saying he has benefited from the same tax breaks for the rich that he has railed against in his campaign against George Bush.

Bob Glancy, chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee, said Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has enjoyed a reduced property tax bill because her 88-acre estate in Fox Chapel, valued at about $3.1 million, is assessed as farmland.

But Marla Romash, senior adviser for Teresa Heinz Kerry, said Glancy is playing politics without the facts.

"It is unfortunate that Republican County Chairman Bob Glancy cared more about making a partisan political attack than checking the facts," Romash said.

"As a result, he's way off the mark. Mrs. Heinz Kerry does not receive the so-called 'Clean and Green' write-off because she has chosen not to apply for it."

Romash said Heinz Kerry in 2002 actually asked to pay higher taxes because she believed that the reassessment made that year valued her property too low.

Glancy's comments came in the wake of an investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that questioned why some large tracts of land are designated as farmland and assessed at a lower rate, in many cases under the state's Clean and Green program designed to preserve farmland.

"The Heinz-Kerry estate is no more a farm than are the tens of thousands of back yards in Allegheny County in which a few square yards are dedicated to growing tomatoes or zucchini," Glancy said in a news release.

GOP spokesman Michael O'Connell said Kerry is getting an undeserved tax break.

"As he runs around the country, John Kerry can hardly get out of bed in the morning without talking about tax cuts for the rich," he said. "I think it raises a real question."

But in a letter Heinz Kerry wrote, dated March 12, 2002, to former county Chief Executive James Roddey, she said she was "not writing to express my anger, but to point out that my property is being undertaxed."

She said two assessment notices sent in 2000 and 2002 both incorrectly reduced her property value and asked that "someone with the authority to do so will make the proper correction and bill me accordingly."

Romash said Heinz Kerry paid the higher amount.

Romash also turned the tables on Glancy and criticized President Bush, saying he saved $23,679 last year because of an agricultural exemption on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. In 2002, she said, Bush accepted an exemption that reduced the property from $2.1 million to $950,000.

Sam Wilson, head of assessment for Allegheny County, also characterized Glancy's criticism as "politics as usual" and said the Heinz estate is not assessed as farmland.

Although the county Web site lists it as a "general farm," Wilson said anything over 10 acres is put in that category, but it has no effect on the actual assessment.

"If it were underassessed, the school board and municipality would be in there beating it to death," he said. "Whatever's there is what a willing buyer and seller would transfer for that property."

He said Teresa Heinz Kerry has never applied for a reduction in taxes based on assessment of her property as a farm.