When Pittsburgh didn't get assessment numbers, Wettick ordered Allegheny County officials to appear in court today
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The often-chaotic Allegheny County reassessment case took a bizarre turn Friday when county officials apparently ordered the county computer center not to release reassessment data to City of Pittsburgh officials despite a court order to do so, according to Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr.
Judge Wettick wrote in an order that he had told the city and Pittsburgh Public Schools to provide him with the "final assessment numbers," including the total value of city properties, Friday. But, he wrote, a city attorney and Finance Department employees came to his chambers Friday afternoon saying they did not have the necessary commercial property data from the county.
"These persons stated that a computer disc has been prepared," he wrote, with all of the data needed to calculate the city's millage rate and send out new tax bills. "However, the County Computer Center had been told by county officials not to turn over the disc" to the city.
He ordered the county's solicitor, manager and director of administrative services, "and other appropriate county officials," to be in his office at 2 p.m. today and, if necessary, 10 a.m. Monday.
Which county official -- or officials -- were responsible for preventing the release of data remained a mystery on Friday.
Outgoing county Executive Dan Onorato did not return several calls for comment. And county Executive-elect Rich Fitzgerald, who will be sworn in on Tuesday, said he had nothing to do with the delay.
"When they say it's county officials, I can say it's not me," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "I'm not a county official until next week."
In any case, Mr. Fitzgerald said, based on private conversations with officials he declined to name, "my understanding is that they do have all the numbers they need to do their calculations."
He believes county officials released the data to the city in the late afternoon, after Judge Wettick's order.
Joanna Doven, spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, could not be reached to verify if city officials received the information, however.
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."
First Published December 31, 2011 12:00 am
