New Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald put himself on a collision course Thursday with Common Pleas Court when the Democrat decided to throw out the court-ordered property assessment numbers mailed last month to Pittsburgh and Mount Oliver property owners.

The new 2012 property values are "null and void," and residents can ignore them, Mr. Fitzgerald said Thursday at a news conference.

His administration has instead certified the continued use of the old 2002 values for this year, he said. The county's Office of Property Assessment is sending out letters to municipalities and school districts advising them to use those numbers to set their 2012 property tax millage rates.

Mr. Fitzgerald's decision is in defiance of Common Pleas Court Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr., who is overseeing the reassessment project. Mr. Fitzgerald's announcement came on the same day that Judge Wettick said he would consider a last-minute request from Pittsburgh Public Schools to put off using new property values until 2013, the first time he had shown any possible flexibility in the process.

Mr. Fitzgerald said he was pleased that Judge Wettick was considering a delay in using the numbers, but he would end the whole process immediately.

Instead of using the new numbers, Mr. Fitzgerald will continue trying to convince state lawmakers to tackle reassessment on a statewide basis.

Mr. Fitzgerald, a former president of county council, has been a longtime vocal foe of the reassessment, which was ordered by the state Supreme Court. The court made its ruling in response to several lawsuits brought by county property owners who argued successfully that the value of expensive properties had risen since 2002 and the value of less expensive properties had dropped, resulting in an unfair tax burden for poor property owners.

Asked if he was worried about going to jail for defying court orders, Mr. Fitzgerald said he believed he was following state law. Both the state Second Class County Code -- which applies only to Allegheny County -- and the county's administrative code require that certified assessed property values be sent to taxing bodies by Jan. 15. While new certified numbers have been sent to city and Mount Oliver property owners, reassessment is incomplete for the rest of the county.

As a result of Mr. Fitzgerald's action, all informal hearings for property owners unhappy with their new assessment figure have been canceled.

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, a Democrat who attended the news conference with a bipartisan group of two dozen county, state and municipal officials, encouraged city residents to continue filing formal appeals if they think their new assessment is incorrect in case the court overturns Mr. Fitzgerald's action. The mayor had announced earlier in the day that city staff members would help residents prepare appeals in senior centers, but he dropped that after Mr. Fitzgerald's decision.

The end-of-the-year rush to complete reassessment created "absolute chaos for local municipalities" trying to approve budgets and set tax rates, Mr. Fitzgerald said. His decision to use the old numbers also represented a victory for many residents who faced large increases in their assessments that likely would overwhelm any decreases in millage rates, he said.

Rather than being concerned about angering the judge, he said, "I'm worried that taxpayers would have been losing their homes."

Mr. Fitzgerald's decision drew immediate praise from at least one resident.

"Those new assessments were ridiculous and would have caused people to lose their homes," Sandy Bayus, of West Mifflin, wrote in an email. "Things are bad enough as it is for many people."

County Councilman Vince Gastgeb, R-Bethel Park, offered bipartisan support to Mr. Fitzgerald. "We cannot saddle our taxpayers with terribly bad [assessment] numbers," he said. "I hope Judge Wettick realizes that what he wants done can't be accomplished."

Mr. Ravenstahl said he backed Mr. Fitzgerald's decision to use the 2002 numbers. In a letter he sent Thursday to Judge Wettick, Mr. Ravenstahl said using the 2012 numbers did not give city residents "sufficient opportunity to avail themselves of a meaningful appeals process."

Mr. Fitzgerald said he would start a lobbying effort to get elected officials in all 130 county municipalities and all school districts to write to state legislators, urging them to pass a moratorium on reassessments until statewide standards are adopted.

The county is paying an outside consultant, Cole Layer Trumble, $11 million to help its employees collect and analyze reassessment information. Mr. Fitzgerald said he had not yet considered the issue of whether the county should hold back any of that money if it does not use the consultant's data.

While many city residents received hefty assessment increases, homeowners in some Pittsburgh neighborhoods and in Mount Oliver -- which is part of the city school district -- saw their home values decline. In Mount Oliver, the average assessment dipped 4 percent, according to county statistics.

Mr. Fitzgerald said residents always had the option of making formal appeals of their current assessments if they believed their properties had lost value over the past 10 years.

Attorney Donald Driscoll, who represents one group of residents who sought reassessment, said he had not had time to digest the consequences of Mr. Fitzgerald's decision. But he noted that even Judge Wettick's tentative proposal to delay using the new assessment numbers until 2013 meant that his clients would face another year of paying unconstitutionally higher property taxes than some of their neighbors.

Lawyer Robert Max Junker, whose firm represents a second group of plaintiffs, said Mr. Fitzgerald's loyalty to "the [county's] administrative code and assessment laws is just a smokescreen."

All city property owners whose 2012 assessments rose by less than 58 percent -- the average for the city and Mount Oliver -- were in line to get a tax decrease this year once city and school district millage rates were cut, he said.

Now they are at risk of continuing to pay more taxes than they should, he said.

Earlier in the day, Judge Wettick had announced that he planned to rule on the school district's request to delay use of the 2012 numbers at a status conference set for 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Lawyer Paul N. Lalley, representing the city school district, wrote in a letter that using the just-released property values would make it difficult for the school board to set an accurate millage rate for this year. Too many successful appeals could dramatically reduce the total tax base -- which is used to determine millage rates and tax bills -- and leave the already financially strapped district short of funds, Mr. Lalley said.

"This does seem to be a serious problem," Judge Wettick said. "We may have to move [application of the new assessments] to the following year."

That delay until January 2013 would give all residents time to request both informal hearings and make formal appeals of their new property values.

on the web

Visit post-gazette.com to watch video coverage of County Executive Rich Fitzgerald's news conference.