And if some part of the reassessment data remains delayed until after he takes office next week, he won't be the one to release it, said Mr. Fitzgerald, an outspoken opponent of the reassessment. Incomplete data would prevent local officials from sending out updated tax bills on time.

"I will not allow certified numbers to go out that will be disruptive to the taxpayers of Allegheny County," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "I'm going to employ every strategy I can to prevent it -- go to court, go to Harrisburg, go to the Supreme Court -- to remedy this."

Does that mean he's standing by his campaign pledge that he will go to jail before he will release the reassessment numbers?

"That will be up to somebody else to decide what that means," he said.

City schools solicitor Ira Weiss, who wants the county to issue the data so the school district can send its tax bills on time, called the county's foot-dragging yet another example of "backwater government" that he said has resisted and subverted the reassessment order at every turn.

Judge Wettick's order was intended to equalize widely varying property assessments, making people whose properties were undervalued pay more while letting those whose properties were overvalued pay less. But county officials fear the consequences at the ballot box of asking some property owners to pay more, so they have fought the reassessment, Mr. Weiss has said.

But their apparent refusal to obey Judge Wettick's court order to deliver complete data Friday was "an extraordinary event" in an already dramatic case, he said.

"Someone up the food chain had to make this decision, and then it came down," Mr. Weiss said. "It's boss government, defying court orders -- it's almost beyond belief."