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| - Dear Colin, I seldom disagree with Jake Haulk. But on the issue of real estate taxes, I do take issue with him. Your editorial “Reforming Property Taxes” (Trib 9/21) endorses the Allegheny Institute’s recommendations. I disagree with every one. 1. “State oversight ensuring timely reassessments, assessor certification, and assessment accuracy.” "Timely reassessments". Assessment is a continuous process with changes being made daily for the next assessment roll. Assessors are hired to work 48 or more weeks a year. What are they supposed be doing, working only the last day of the year? Eighty percent of assessments are unchanged in any given year because their values have not been proved to have changed from the available evidence. A reassessment of all properties is costly nonsense. "Assessment accuracy" That requires study of the ratios of assessed value to sales prices. Working alone, I have done many such studies using data readily available from county records. The State Tax Equalization Board makes assessment/sales ratio studies from data provided by each county. The only problem is that they are forbidden to make and publish their detailed findings. All they are permitted to publish is a weighted average for each school district which is used to determine the allocation of state funds to the school districts. The Board verifies and has all the data needed to find and publish the median assessment ratio and measures of dispersion for every class of property, for every municipality, etc. That is what the State should be doing – getting and publishing the assessment ratios. "Assessor certification." Any high school graduate who is reasonably proficient in basic arithmetic can be trained to assess most residential properties in a matter of weeks. The problem is not the assessor's qualifications but the competence of those in charge. They have earned an "F". 2. “Countywide re-assessments at least every three years." What nonsense! Assessment administration is a continuous process charged with up-dating changes in values as sales data indicate. There are less than 20,000 sales per year in Allegheny County and only about a third or fourth of them are outliers which require the assessor’s attention. Once again, to repeat, assessment is a continuous process. No countywide reassessment is necessary unless there are no individual property records, like the destruction from a fire! 3. “No more than a 3 percent tax revenue windfall from any reassessment.” Why any windfall at all? See the next recommendation! 4. “Voter referendums for any school, municipal or county millage increases – no exceptions.” Millage is calculated by dividing budgeted expenditures for the next year (called the “levy”) by total taxable assessed values with the result being the millage. What needs to be restrained are the levies! A windfall of 3 percent or any percent means that expenditures adjust to the millage instead of vice versa as it should be. Sorry, this is one time the Institute's recommendations are wrong from beginning to end.
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