Commission proposes 4-year property assessment plan

County Executive Sara Innamorato says recommendations deserve “careful consideration.”

By MEGAN TROTTER
TribLive

Allegheny County’s Government Review Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday to release a draft that outlines a recommended four-year reassessment schedule that would begin in the first year of each county executive term.

The report outlines 14 potential recommendations aimed at addressing the county’s long-standing property reassessment problems, as commission members consider whether the system remains equitable amid years of changing real estate values.

The Government Review Commission is an independent body convened every 10 years to study county government and recommend changes to the Home Rule Charter.

The nine-member commission — five appointed by County Council and four by the county executive — was sworn into office in November.

“The idea is to depoliticize this process,” said Rohit Acharya, who chairs the commission and is a nonresident fellow for Brookings Institution and founding partner at Common Good Labs.

Without regular countywide reassessments, some properties are reassessed at higher values while others are not. As a result, neighbors living in homes of a similar value can face significantly different tax bills depending on when their properties were last assessed.

Some officials have also argued that the lack of standardized reassessments makes it more difficult for school districts and municipalities to plan and budget.

Allegheny County has used a 2012 base year for property assessments, meaning assessments generally reflect what properties were worth during that period rather than what they might sell for today.

The county’s last countywide reassessment was completed in 2013.

What’s a baseyear system?

The base-year system is intended to ensure similar properties receive similar assessments by removing the effects of changing market conditions. As a result, a property’s assessed value does not automatically rise or fall with changes in its current market value.

The gap between assessed values and current market values also becomes significant when property owners appeal their assessments.

The new Allegheny County common level ratio for the 2027 tax year is 49.3%. This factor will be applied to the current market value, in appeals, starting in September 2026.

A common level ratio is used to translate current market value into an assessment for certain assessment appeals. It is separate from the tax rate and doesn’t increase everyone’s taxes.

The commission stressed the importance of educating the public, noting that Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that does not require regular property reassessments.

Acharya said that once new property values are certified, residents should have an opportunity to review the valuation information, correct factual errors, understand the new assessment and prepare an appeal.

“There should be a way to distinguish factual errors in the data, as opposed to the disputes about the valuation, which would require formal appeal,” Acharya said.

State Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, testified in support of a regular process during the commission’s last meeting. He spoke about his proposed legislation, introduced in July 2025, that would require all 67 counties in Pennsylvania to conduct property value reassessments every five years.

The commission backed Fontana’s efforts to fix a statewide system without mandatory, regular property reassessments, leading to severe tax disparities and reliance on ad hoc court battles.

Allegheny County’s plans

Separately, Allegheny County Council has been meeting with the public in campaign of its own bill designed to fix the property assessment problem.

Allegheny County Councilman Dan Grzybek, D-Bethel Park, sponsored the legislation, which would mandate countywide property reassessments every three years beginning in 2028.

However, the review commission said the way that council’s provision is written could politicize the process and also recommended shifting Allegheny County Council’s role in tax abatements from reviewing and adjudicating individual projects to providing broader, portfolio-level oversight.

Historically, assessments are among Allegheny County’s most politically charged issues.

“One of the issues we had in the past was it was on an odd year, so we fall right before an election,” said commission member Robert Vescio, who is the co-founder and CFO of C&G Strategies. “As we’ve seen in the past with the county commissioner system and the first county exec, this system has been politicized.”

Currently, many tax abatements are considered individually at the council level.

“It’s difficult to determine whether a tax abatement makes sense without a holistic view of what kind of tax abatement the county has provided to different property owners,” Acharya said.

Under the recommendation, Allegheny County Economic Development (ACED) would be responsible for administering individual tax-abatement applications and managing the county’s overall abatement portfolio. ACED would then provide regular presentations to county council on the collective portfolio.

“So our recommendation is that instead of council oversight on an individual level, council should be providing general guidelines that should then be administered at the ACED level,” Acharya said.

In December 2024, Allegheny County Council approved a 36% property tax increase, the millage rate was raised to 6.43 mills, up from 4.73 mills for the 2025 budget. The increase sparked public outrage.

Allegheny County’s acting Controller Amy Weise Clements said the increase generated an additional $132 million in revenue. She said it provided only temporary financial relief and that rising costs, the end of federal pandemic aid and continued spending growth could make it difficult to balance future budgets.

Officials with the County Executive’s office have said there will be no tax increase in the 2027 budget.

Allegheny County spokeswoman Abigail Gardner confirmed on Wednesday that County Executive Sara Innamorato’s position remained the same.

This is despite growing concerns over budget limitations and county spending. Last month, a working group recommended potential increased tax revenue options along with other sweeping changes to fix Allegheny’s pension system’s growing $1.4 billion unfunded liability.

“The report presents a substantial set of recommendations that deserve careful consideration, and my team and I will review their legal, fiscal and operational implications in the coming days,” Innamorato said in a statement. “As the commission emphasized in its meeting today, public education and engagement, protection for homeowners, and providing a predictable and responsible timeline for routine reassessments are necessary for making reassessment a regular function of county government.”

Pennsylvania law allows an assessment reduction following a qualifying catastrophic loss, although the property owner must apply within six months of the loss.

Generally the county can only change a property’s assessment under specific circumstances, including omissions, mathematical or clerical errors and physical changes to the property. This includes demolitions, subdivisions or work associated with building permits, according to the Office of Property Assessment.

School districts or municipalities also can request an interim assessment for new construction or major improvements.

In April 2024, Pittsburgh Public Schools sued the county, alleging the county’s outdated property assessment system violated the state constitution’s uniformity clause, which requires local and state taxes to apply the same measure to all taxpayers or properties.

Visiting Judge Kenneth Valasek, from Armstrong County, dismissed the lawsuit in 2025, finding the district could avoid harm simply by raising its tax rate rather than suing the county.

The district appealed to Commonwealth Court, which heard arguments in March.

The case is pending a decision.

In June, more than half of Allegheny County’s 43 school districts announced they were planning to hike property taxes next school year to make up for dwindling revenue due to lack of a countywide reassessment since 2012.