Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette
	Johnnie Mae Dixon watches as Gov. Ed Rendell signs the property tax reform bill yesterday in the dining room of her Point Breeze home.

With a symbolic signing ceremony in a widow's tidy North Point Breeze home, Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday showcased a $1 billion property tax relief measure that he hopes will provide a major boost for his re-election campaign along with its aid to Pennsylvania homeowners.

The law, passed this month after a protracted legislative battle, is heavily weighted in favor of lower-income senior citizens like Johnnie Mae Dixon, whose dining room table the governor appropriated as a desk to sign a copy of the bill.

According to administration figures, Mrs. Dixon will receive $750 in a state rebate next year, reducing her net school property tax bill from $830 to $80. Additional state aid projected for the following year will effectively eliminate her school taxes.

The first year of the program draws on a $200 million loan from the state lottery fund. When expected revenue from planned casinos begins to flow, that loan is to be repaid and roughly $700 million in tax relief extended to homeowners across the state, with the average relief projected at about 17 percent of school property tax bills. The average homeowner would see a reduction of roughly $200.

"A billion dollars is significant tax relief,'' Mr. Rendell proclaimed. "It's a good step for everybody; for senior citizens, it's a great step.''

Mr. Rendell, who was surrounded by Mrs. Dixon's neighbors and local Democratic officials, including Mayor Bob O'Connor, hailed the legislation as a "historic'' reversal of decades of fruitless Harrisburg debate over countless versions of property tax reform.

Republican critics of the bill have contended that its relief to most homeowners is too modest to make a meaningful dent in soaring property tax bills.

Lynn Swann, Mr. Rendell's Republican challenger in the governor's race, tried to bathe the bill in a skeptical light with his own front lawn news conference.

He appeared later in the afternoon at the Mt. Lebanon home of Sam and Heather Dalesandro. The campaign said that the young couple, with four children ranging in age from 2¹/₂ to 8, had seen their school tax bill on a house assessed at $173,700 increase by roughly 30 percent, to $4,092, since Mr. Rendell first promised to cut property taxes by an average of 30 percent.

The Swann campaign, projecting continued increases in Mt. Lebanon school taxes, maintained that the family's eventual benefit from gaming revenues would not keep up with the likely pace of tax increases.

Mr. Rendell pointed to another feature of the bill, a requirement for school district referendums on tax increases that exceed the rate of inflation, as a tool to hold down future increases. The bill also includes the option for school districts to further cut property tax rates, though not taxes overall, with dollar-for-dollar increases in earned income taxes.

Republican critics have argued, however, that the exceptions to the referendum requirement, for purposes like federal mandates and rising health-care costs, make it all but meaningless.

Mr. Rendell conceded that the measure in some respects fell short of his 2002 proposal, but he insisted that it was a significant policy victory.

"Every homeowner in the state will get property tax relief -- 200,000 seniors zeroed out [on property tax liability], another 550,000 will see somewhere between 30 and 90 percent relief.''

Mr. Rendell said that while further and broader tax relief might be a goal for the future, "don't in any way let that fact denigrate what's happened here -- a billion dollars in tax relief, the biggest tax cut, in property taxes, in the history of Pennsylvania.''

Mr. Swann said it illustrated an overall failure in leadership by his rival.

"This afternoon was the official capitulation of Ed Rendell and his promise of providing 30 percent property tax reduction to the property owners of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,'' he said. "I don't see where this is historic; I see it as a historic letdown for property owners.''

The governor appeared first yesterday in Nanticoke, in northeastern Pennsylvania, in the home of another widow slated for a big tax cut, before symbolically repeating the signing here.

The $200 million lottery fund loan will fund rebates to be issued in 2007 to homeowners or renters 65 or older with incomes of $35,000 or less.

After slot machine revenue materializes, homeowners across the state will see reductions in their school property tax bills, varying from district to district. According to the projection, a homeowner facing the state average of $1,475 in school taxes would see roughly a $200 reduction.