Some critics say Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato's latest stab at setting 2006 property tax assessments seems like a freeze disguised as a plan.

		Comparing the assessment proposals Graphic: Comparison of assessment plans for residential property Graphic: Comparison of assessment plans for commercial property

"It's equivalent to the freeze that the judge threw out years ago," said Wayne Biernacki, president of Real Estate Tax Consultants and a former president of the Assessors Association of Pennsylvania. "It's the status quo."

In 1996, Republican county commissioners Larry Dunn and Bob Cranmer ordered a five-year freeze in assessments that later was ruled unconstitutional by Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr., the same judge who tossed out Mr. Onorato's proposed 4 percent cap on assessment increases earlier this year.

Mr. Onorato vigorously disputes that his proposal amounts to a freeze. He says his plan to stick with numbers created in 2002, the year of the county's last reassessment, meets requirements of state law.

"That is how the counties around us do it. That's how they have been doing it for 30 or 40 years," he said. "Don't tell me this is a freeze. It's not a freeze."

Assessments have troubled the chief executive all year. In February, he released results of a reassessment that, countywide, would have brought a 19 percent average increase in property taxable values. Nearly 80 percent of homeowners would have seen at least some increase. That would have translated into large property tax increases unless municipalities and school districts rolled back their millages.

Mr. Onorato tried to put a cap on those increases, while leaving the decreases alone. After Judge Wettick ruled against the cap, Mr. Onorato then tried to revise values from the 2002 reassessment, using appeal results and other factors.

This week, Mr. Onorato said he altered his plan again, making 2002 the base year and keeping values unchanged for next year.

Allegheny County Council will consider the plan at a committee meeting Wednesday.

Base year assessment systems are legal in Pennsylvania. But one of the questions confronting the newest proposal is whether it is proper to use 2002 assessments as the base year when newer 2006 numbers that utilized more recent sales -- but which were rejected by Mr. Onorato -- are available.

Jeffrey Blum, a tax attorney with Buchanan Ingersoll, said such an approach could be "tantamount to a freeze."

"There may be a question as to whether this is valid. It could be argued that because [the base year] wasn't adopted in the year the reassessment was done that it is a freeze," he said. "Can you do it after the fact? I think that's a question open to challenge."

Dominick Gambino, the property assessment manager for former Chief Executive Jim Roddey and a frequent critic of Mr. Onorato's efforts, described the latest plan as "nothing short of a freeze."

"To call this a plan is an oxymoron. He's done nothing [but] to allow the inequities to be frozen," he said. "What he's done is frozen in the inequities that were created in the market since 2002."

Critics also argue that the chief executive's new plan would leave assessed values artificially high in some of the county's poorest municipalities.

If Mr. Onorato had decided to use the 2006 reassessment values, five municipalities would have seen decreases: Clairton, Homestead, Braddock, North Braddock and Wilkinsburg.

The biggest average drop, 16.09 percent, would have been in Braddock.

"The lower-income taxpayers are going to be penalized," said Noah Fardo, a partner at a Shadyside law firm that represents residential and commercial property owners. "There can be strong arguments against what [Mr. Onorato] is doing now."

Mr. Blum agreed.

"It can be regressive. It can adversely affect those people whose properties have not increased in value. It benefits those people whose properties have increased in value," he said.

"They're subsidizing the well-to-do."

At Tuesday's County Council meeting, Councilman Bill Robinson, D-Hill District, joined all seven Republicans in voting to send the base year plan to committee because he was concerned about its impact on Wilkinsburg, which would have seen a 5.8 percent decrease under the first batch of 2006 numbers.

Councilman Chuck Martoni, a Swissvale Democrat whose district includes Braddock and North Braddock, said he was worried homeowners in poorer municipalities might be stuck with an unfair share of property taxes.

"That's something that has to be addressed," he said. "We can't hurt the poor communities."

Mr. Onorato said municipalities would have increased their millage rates to offset falling assessment values.

Jesse Brown, president of Braddock Borough Council, and Ralph Imbrogno, Clairton's municipal manager, both said they likely would have sought bigger millage increases if the 2006 numbers had been certified.

Mr. Imbrogno said he thought Mr. Onorato's base year plan would add stability to the budgetary process.

"I think it's a win-win," he said. "We can go ahead and set our budget and the citizens pretty much will be paying what they paid last year."

Mr. Onorato's plan got an endorsement from Mr. Cranmer, who does not believe it constitutes the same kind of freeze he and Mr. Dunn ordered almost a decade ago.

"What I like is that it's in concert with what other counties do. That's the big issue. We have this fixation in Allegheny County over this assessment process. It's like self-flagellation. As we go through this process, people pick up and move," he said. "While we go through this process, which I don't think is accomplishing anything, other counties sit back and twiddle their thumbs."

Mr. Cranmer believes something must be done to rein in a system that will require him to pay more than $8,000 in property taxes in Brentwood next year because of increases in his assessment.

"If Dan wants to use the 2002 [numbers] as the base year, my hat's off to him. I support him. He's representing me well. He understands my problem," he said.