Sole property reassessment moratorium goes to Washington County
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Many county leaders statewide -- including those in Allegheny County -- might have welcomed a moratorium on property reassessments.
Only Washington County, though, has apparently won a moratorium, thanks to 11th-hour changes in legislation approved in the General Assembly late Thursday.
A bill that originally intended to put a 17-month halt to all county revaluations of property underwent surgery Wednesday before sailing through both houses by wide margins. Now it instead gives only Washington County an open-ended moratorium, just in time to avoid the court-ordered hiring of a reassessment vendor.
"The county is elated beyond belief," said state Rep. Jesse White, D-Cecil, a moratorium backer.
One county to the north? No elation.
"We're being treated unfairly," said Megan Dardanell, spokeswoman for Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. She said her boss has "always thought that we are being targeted," and this latest move did nothing to change that perception.
Washington County had faced a deadline of next week, set by Common Pleas President Judge Debbie O'Dell Seneca, to hire a reassessment vendor. Mr. White said that would have entailed signing an $8 million contract including a $750,000 nonrefundable deposit.
That helped motivate Mr. White to push for a statewide pause in reassessments. He also helped to pass bills this week to create House task forces that will try to codify reassessment standards and best practices for counties to follow.
"We had been supporting a statewide moratorium," said Douglas Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association. "We have some rather significant things to propose in the assessment process, and it makes some sense, if the process is going to change, not to do [reassessments] now," because they may have to be done again under new rules.
Mr. White said the House passed the moratorium, but it ran into trouble in the Senate. There was concern about its ramifications, and especially about a likely collision with Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr.'s order for a reassessment there effective Jan. 1. Property owners are expected to get notices of their new assessments starting this month.
Sen. John Pippy, R-Moon, amended the bill so that the moratorium applied only to Washington County. Mr. Pippy's district includes many communities in southern and western Allegheny County, plus Peters in Washington County.
He said Senate lawyers concluded that any attempt to stop ongoing reassessments, including Allegheny County's, would "probably lose in court." It would have run afoul of court-ordered schedules and ongoing contracts.
First Published July 2, 2011 12:00 am
