How a government administers and collects its real estate taxes is, in the final analysis, an empirical statement about the ethics of the government's elected officials. Taxation represents the government’s authority to compel the surrender of private resources for public purposes, and when such compulsion is unevenly applied it violates our basic sense of fairness.

Further, unethically administered real estate taxes can also signal how the moneys are likely to be used, for favoritism in how the monies are extracted is often accompanied by cronyism in how the monies are spent. No business can subject its owners to the capricious surrender of hard-earned monies to pay unreasonable or unethically administered taxes without being questioned about due-diligence, especially if few or no services are forthcoming.

While real estate taxes are deductible for federal tax purposes, paying off assessors for favorable assessments is not. Capriciously and/or unethically administered real estate taxes create resentment, uncertainty, and ultimately deter economic development.

Real estate taxpayers in Allegheny County do not have to rely solely on the ethics of their locally elected county commissioners to make sure that real estate taxes are fairly imposed and collected. The Pennsylvania Constitution contains a very strong fairness standard in its Uniformity Clause which real estate taxpayers have recourse to through the courts. Twice in the past 25 years, irate taxpayers in Allegheny County have successfully asked the court to wrench administration of the real estate tax out of the hands of their county commissioners, and put it under control of a judge to accomplish the fairness which the elected commissioners were unwilling to achieve.

Most voters in Allegheny County will be surprised to learn that neither the current commissioners nor the new County Executive and County Council will have anything to say about the $1.3 billion in property tax bills that will start pouring forth in January, 2000 to finance the County, schools and municipalities. The fairness of these tax bills, as a practical matter, will be the sole responsibility of Judge Stanton Wettich and Sabre Systems of Ohio.

Of course, nobody elected either to do this particular task. Neither the judge nor Sabre Systems is subject to any publicly discernible oversight. Representative democracy has thus taken pause twice in 25 years about the ethics of taxation.

For Allegheny County voters, the upcoming election of County Executive and County Council seemingly holds out the promise of finally straightening out the blatant inequities in the assessment and collection of real estate taxes in Allegheny County, and returning the power to assess the real estate tax and thus its ultimate fairness to democratically elected officials.

Sadly, this can not happen, because the political bargain struck in the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1997 expressly prohibited any Allegheny Home Rule Charter from dealing with property tax assessments. This pessimistic appraisal is based on:

"B. Act 149 of General Assembly of 1997 Creating Second Class Charter Law and the Referenda:

Thus, better than $1.3 billion per year will continue to be extracted from Allegheny County's real estate owners (and indirectly renters of course) without any real prospect for eliminating the decades old inequities.

By error or forethought, the movers and shakers behind Allegheny County's Home Rule Charter froze current Pennsylvania real estate tax law so that, unless changed by the General Assembly, the assessment of real estate will continue to be the prisoner of Pennsylvania's Second Class County Assessment Code which has driven real estate taxpayers into the courts twice in the last twenty-five years.

The Second Class County Assessment Law of 1939 established the Board of Property Assessment, Appeal and Review as the quasi independent agency composed of 7 members, appointed historically by a majority vote of the County Commissioners. Some pertinent parts of the code that severely inhibit improving the quality of assessments include the following:

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REAL QUESTIONS

The real questions to pose to candidates Roddey and Wecht, and those for County Council, given they are prohibited from reforming by local law the County’s system of property assessments, are:

• What will these candidates ask the General Assembly to do to get real estate tax administration in Allegheny County into the 19'th, 20'th, or 21^st century, and finally fix the ethical morass? When do they intend to do this?
• Can economic development in Allegheny County be sold with a straight face around the US without first fixing the real estate assessment process so that prospective real estate taxpayers can credibly believe that fair real estate tax assessments will occur on a permanent, forward going basis?