Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato yesterday told County Council that he will stop the court-ordered reassessment of property values in the county -- to be completed in 2012 -- from taking effect if he is elected governor of Pennsylvania.

"I will do everything in my power to make sure that it doesn't happen," said Mr. Onorato, in the first of four appearances he is required to make at council meetings every year.

Mr. Onorato, who is one of five candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in the gubernatorial race, said "a property reassessment is the worst thing that can happen in this county at this time."

After months of resisting a judge's attempt to implement a reassessment timeline last year, Mr. Onorato said he only complied with a court order to start the process of reassessing the value of the 570,000 or so properties in the county, "because my staff had to convince me there was nothing left to do."

There was nothing left to do in the way of a legal fight to stop a reassessment, he said, "except that [Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr.] would have thrown me in jail for contempt of court."

In December, Judge Wettick accepted a county plan to complete a reassessment of all property in the county for implementation in 2012.

That plan will start with the county sending mailers to all property owners in the next few weeks, requesting that they verify the data characteristics of their properties. That data will be used to edit and clarify the county's existing database on the characteristics of all real estate in the county.

Next, the county will hire a contractor by the end of April to start a parcel-by-parcel review and analysis of approximately 395,000 properties. That process should end by mid-2011.

According to the county, a parcel-by-parcel review was done on 175,000 properties during the 2005 reassessment, which was not certified because Mr. Onorato threw it out on grounds that property taxes would have been increased an average of 19 percent. The properties reviewed in 2005 will not see a parcel-by-parcel inspection in this round.

Following that will be an informal public review of the new assessed property values. But property owners will not be able to challenge their assessed values through the appeals process until the reassessment is certified in 2012 and property owners have paid their property taxes.

But should he make it to the governor's mansion next year, Mr. Onorato said the first thing he will do is put a stop to that process by mandating a stop to all court-ordered property reassessments in the state.

"I will be able to do that because when the Supreme Court ruled on this issue, it said this issue should be in the purview of the state Legislature," he said, adding that he would like to set up a panel to investigate how other states perform property reassessments.

In addition to addressing the county's ongoing property reassessment plan, Mr. Onorato announced that state officials plan to inspect the chairlift at Boyce Park Ski Area in Monroeville and Plum this week.

Irate snowboarders and skiers have flooded the county with calls in recent weeks because they have not been able to take the chairlift up the main ski hill at Boyce since ski area opened on Jan. 1.

State officials refused to inspect and certify the chairlift on Dec. 14 after the county upgraded the lift's operating system without seeking a state permit for the upgrade.

The county has been working on completing its submission of a permit application to the state Department of Labor and Industry since last week so that state inspectors can return and certify the chairlift.

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