Aug 3, 2022 2 min read

In his July 29 opinion piece (“State, counties lack will to restore assessments fairness”), Colin McNickle makes a powerful case for the inequity in property assessments and the reluctance of governmental bodies to address it.

The property tax system indeed wildly misses the true value of homes except in cases where school districts have filed an appeal upon the sale of a property in an effort to tax it based upon the sale price rather than an outdated assessment value.

I had to file a second level appeal to Common Pleas Court to have the assessment of my former home in Upper St. Clair properly valued after the 2012 Allegheny County reassessment. I asked an assistant county solicitor who was present whether he could foresee a reassessment ever again being requested by an elected official. His answer was an unequivocal, “Never!” What elected official would want to impose a reassessment when it always stirs up a hornet’s nest of angry homeowners?

Why after decades of debate about property tax reform do we not kill it forever and make up the revenue through a straightforward, unquestionable method such as the income tax and/or the sales tax? Many legislative proposals have been floated to do just that, but they have gone nowhere due to a lack of courage in the General Assembly. It would seem that we are doomed to suffer a regressive property assessment inequity for the foreseeable future.

Oren Spiegler

Peters Township