Allegheny County Council members will consider two approaches to dealing with a controversial property reassessment effort.

Council President Rich Fitzgerald will ask his colleagues to back a lawsuit seeking to have the state's assessment system declared broken and ordering the state legislature to fix it.

Mr. Fitzgerald, D-Squirrel Hill, argued that a court-ordered reassessment of all properties in Allegheny County is unfair when other counties across the state continue to base their real-estate taxes on assessments that are decades old.

Councilman Chuck McCullough, R-Upper St. Clair, today unveiled another approach. He plans to introduce legislation that he said should "take the panic" out of the reassessment process. His measure also seeks to assure that no municipality or school district would be able to collect a windfall in additional property taxes if assessed values rise overall, he said.

Council will meet at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Gold Room at the county courthouse.

Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. McCullough are proposing their alternative responses to the $11 million reassessment ordered by county Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. as that effort is about half completed. County officials on Wednesday are scheduled to provide Judge Wettick with a progress report.

Reassessment crews are spending an average of three to five minutes visiting each of the almost 600,000 real estate parcels across the county. Owners will receive preliminary notice of the new values assigned to their homes and businesses starting in July.

Current property assessments in Allegheny County are based on 2002 values. Despite the nationwide economic recession that has slashed property values across the country, it is likely that the average assessment in Allegheny County will rise by a double-digit amount. An "anti-windfall" provision in state law, however, requires that county, municipal and school district tax rates then be adjusted downward to reflect higher property values.

First Published: January 31, 2011, 8:00 p.m.