Our bread and their reassessment circus
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If you've spent any amount of time online, you've undoubtedly been "rickrolled."
For the uninitiated, rickrolling is an Internet bait-and-switch. You click on a link to something you want to see, but instead you get diverted to Rick Astley's 1987 music video "Never Gonna Give You Up":
"Never gonna give you up / Never gonna let you down / Never gonna run around and desert you ..."
Online it's just a silly misdirection to a bouncy tune. Here in Allegheny County we have a different version -- not silly at all, though the bouncing sensation nauseatingly persists.
County officials announced Dec. 5 that property reassessments would go out Dec. 19, just past Judge R. Stanton Wettick's deadline. Despite the delay, the mailing would be in time for the city of Pittsburgh and school district to blah blah blah ...
Their announcement was just another installment in the nail-biting drama of taxpayers' constant uncertainty, setting the radio talk shows abuzz and allowing our brave political leaders to strike their familiar anti-reassessment, friend-of-the-people pose.
But the announcement also happened to come, quite conveniently, the day before Allegheny County Council passed a huge 21 percent property tax increase based on existing valuations. Amid all the brouhaha, did you even notice?
County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, "long-time opponent" of reassessment (as we're always reminded), objects in part because "experience shows that reassessment means tax increases" (as he put it last week).
But the day after council's 11-member Democratic majority passed the veto-proof tax hike back in November, the newly elected Mr. Fitzgerald praised his erstwhile colleagues for their "courageous vote."
"Increasing the millage [from 4.69 to 5.69] was something that had to be done," he said. So that's OK but increasing taxes (disproportionately on lower-income home-owners) due to erratic property reassessments is wrong?
The county would not have been allowed to keep more than 5 percent of the revenues from a reassessment windfall -- hence Mr. Fitzgerald's raucous, self-aggrandizing and risk-free defiance of the judge, all to divert us from the perfectly legal 21 percent tax hike -- and irresponsible spending increases-- in the county's 2012 budget.
While riveted by his dog-and-pony show, we got stuck with big new bills. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been Rich-rolled!
"Never gonna make you cry / Never gonna say goodbye / Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you ..."
I guess technically it's not a lie to fail to mention you favor property tax increases during your campaign. And if your opponent challenges you to pledge along with him not to raise taxes and nobody cares that you refuse, well, maybe you're just a very lucky guy!
Lie or not, he's hurt us. But just as Rick Astley needed the sunglasses, electronic drum kit and cute back-up dancers, Rich-rolling required some key assists:
The reassessment was ordered in 2007, but then-county Executive Dan Onorato refused to launch it -- even though Judge Wettick, a Democrat from Point Breeze, conveniently waited to issue his ruling until after Mr. Onorato's re-election was as good as secured.
The county executive no doubt remembered that the 2002 reassessment cost Jim Roddey his seat in 2003, and fancying himself fit for the governor's mansion, Mr. Onorato couldn't risk the voters' wrath on his home turf.
The county appealed, lost and dragged its feet. Sure -- Judge Wettick's do-or-die deadline came in the last month of the year, but that also happened to be well after the county executive race and council's budget deliberations.
The county spent a lot less on assessments this time around -- $11 million, compared with 2002's $30 million -- and it looks like we taxpayers got what we paid for.
At this point, we ought to consider whether every part of the woefully inept process was, for political reasons, intentional.
"Never gonna make you cry / Never gonna say goodbye ..."
Well, we're all crying now, but as for saying goodbye to those responsible? Not a chance. As one reader (and lawyer) told me two weeks ago, their performance "was brilliant. Offensive, but brilliant."
Assessing the property reassessment mess on a talk show the other night, I couldn't come up with an appropriate term, such as "debacle," "betrayal" or "embarrassment to the concept of representative self-government." I could only summon the word "circus." City Paper editor Chris Potter quipped, "Actually, that does a disservice to circuses."
So true! Unlike these politicians, circus workers are hardworking, harm no humans in their acts and earn their money honestly. County government is no circus, but I'm willing to bet we re-elect these clowns.
First Published January 16, 2012 12:00 am
