Every county in Pennsylvania is going to have to re-examine its property assessment system if the state Supreme Court upholds the ruling issued in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas yesterday.

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But property assessments will not change until that case makes its way through the court system, which could take a year or more.

In Allegheny County, where Chief Executive Dan Onorato's decision to use 2002 values as a base year for assessments instead of more recent figures led to the lawsuit, the outcry was swift and sure.

Mr. Onorato said the county will appeal the decision by Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. that the base-year system violates the state constitution by creating unfair tax burdens for some property owners while improperly easing taxes for others. He said the judge had a right to declare that unconstitutional, but he took issue with the judge ordering a reassessment to take effect in 2009 if the case is decided by the Supreme Court by then, and in 2010 if it isn't.

He said for Judge Wettick to "dictate certain dates and how we tax is far beyond the power of a judge in my opinion."

Ira Weiss, the attorney for plaintiffs from the South Hills who sued on the basis that their homes were assessed higher than their neighbors' because they had purchased them more recently, said Judge Wettick had every right to order a reassessment and could have ordered one immediately.

Mr. Onorato said there was a portion of the ruling that he did like.

"This ruling does not throw out the numbers we're currently using," he said. "For the short term nothing changes in Allegheny County. That's the good news."

He also said other counties that have used the base-year assessment system for decades without trouble are now lining up to help overturn the ruling that declared that system unconstitutional.

In the 94-page opinion, the judge reviewed the 1982 state law that allows counties to peg property assessments to values of a certain year and declared it unconstitutional. He said values of properties in different communities do not rise and fall uniformly, so taxing them on out-of-date numbers is inherently unfair.

Judge Wettick, while conceding that governments can never achieve 100 percent accuracy in property assessments, said they can be closer than they are.

In Allegheny County, for instance, about half of the properties have assessed values that are off by about 22 percent -- half of those are too high, the other half are too low.

While he was ruling on a case regarding assessments in Allegheny County, the judge also recognized that the problem exists in nearly all of Pennsylvania's other 66 counties, so, when he ordered a countywide reassessment, he also put in a provision that it can wait a year until the case clears the higher courts in the state.

"Allegheny County should not be governed by reassessment standards that do not apply to Pennsylvania's other 66 counties," he wrote. "Thus, the interests of justice are served by permitting Allegheny County to continue to assess property in the same manner as all other counties while the anticipated appeal from my ruling is pending in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Also, this will permit the General Assembly to consider whether to enact assessment laws similar to those of other states."

Judge Wettick's opinion spends 37 pages detailing the laws of the other 49 states regarding assessments, including the citation numbers, which could give state legislators a road map for developing a new law regarding property tax assessments.

Mr. Onorato said he instituted the base year because every time the county tries to reassess it winds up with the same mess of inaccurate numbers.

"The people of Allegheny County have spoken. They are sick of reassessments and back-door tax increases," Mr. Onorato said, referring to local governments and school districts not reducing tax rates when assessments increase.

Mr. Onorato pledged that he would not push another reassessment on county residents.

"You'll never get it right," he said.

That's not what the county's chief assessor, Deborah Bunn, testified to during the trial. She said the county's deviation on property values was below 15 percent for the 2005 assessment that was supposed to be implemented in 2006, but was never certified. Instead, Mr. Onorato decided to stick with the 2002 assessments.

Former county Chief Executive Jim Roddey yesterday noted that in the 2003 campaign Mr. Onorato derided the 2002 numbers that he later decided to use as a base year.

"I like Dan and I think he's done a good job as chief executive, but I don't think he's done a good job with the assessments," Mr. Roddey said.

Mr. Weiss said the numbers in the 2005 reassessment that would have been used in 2006 were very close to the true property values.

"The county executive confuses bad numbers and numbers he doesn't like," Mr. Weiss said.

He said if the assessments system isn't fixed on a statewide basis with new laws from the state Legislature, then, if the ruling is affirmed by the Supreme Court, counties across the state can expect to see lawsuits pop up challenging their assessment systems.

Mr. Weiss and Mr. Roddey noted that Judge Wettick is rarely reversed by higher courts.

"I think it's obvious Judge Wettick did a lot of work and a lot of homework," said Janet Burkardt, an attorney who worked with Mr. Weiss on the case.