Jan 5, 2017 3 min read

It’s an oft-quoted figure: Washington County’s $6.96 million contract with Tyler Technologies of Moraine, Ohio, to reassess all property in a process that began in 2013.

But part of that contract was to be Tyler’s development of computer software that would facilitate the of sharing of property-related information and tax billing and a new cashiering system.

That hasn’t come about, Washington County Treasurer Francis King said this week, and the county has had to regroup to generate more than 111,000 county tax bills, which have, until this year, been mailed the first week of January.

People are so attuned to the treasurer’s schedule that King’s office has been fielding calls from property owners wondering where their county tax bills are. Taxpayers have until March 31 to pay their county taxes at a 2 percent discount, and Pennsylvania law requires that people have their bills in hand 60 days before the discount deadline.

King’s new target date is Jan. 21, which would be in compliance with state’s 60-day lead time.

“If it’s later than Jan. 31, we’ll just extend the discount period,” said Scott Fergus, Washington County director of administration.

The county has had to enlist the aid of its previous tax bill information provider, RBA Professional Data Systems Inc. of State College, Centre County, to work with Tyler on the tax bill database.

At this point, the county expects to obtain a file from Tyler to integrate with its existing RBA software.

“We’ve extended the contract with RBA,” Fergus said. The county has dealt with RBA for decades, and on Thursday, the commissioners, at the request of the purchasing department, approved a $23,016 payment for a software maintenance renewal with the firm and $3,564 for a new software upgrade for this year.

King’s attempt to work with Tyler on tax bills to be generated after the first reassessment in 35 years has been going on for quite a while.

“They came in 2014 and we showed them what we do,” King said. What Tyler came up with for Washington County was a more cumbersome system, not a streamlined one, he said.

Angela Bodnar, King’s deputy treasurer, said, “It just wasn’t user-friendly.” The previous system consolidated property information while the Tyler program required viewing on multiple screens, she said.

“How this is going to work out, I don’t know,” King said. “I’m sure there are going to be lawyers involved. They had three years. They knew our deadline.

“Last April, they were so far behind we knew Tyler was not going to be ready in January. They led us to believe they had done this in other counties in Pennsylvania,” King said. “They kept telling us, ‘This is the way Ohio and New York do it.’ “

The county’s voluminous 2013 contract with Tyler noted that the vendor’s “system must be able to meet all needs for tax claim, tax revenue (and) treasurer functions/operations. … The system proposed must be able to produce a tax bill.”

A Tyler spokesman acknowledged an inquiry about the matter from the Observer-Reporter, on Wednesday but did not provide a comment from the firm by mid-afternoon Thursday.