For those of you who may have missed it, Onorato attempted to address my property tax question during his cyber town hall meeting. I was pleasantly surprised to see my question addressed and not tossed aside. I was also pleased to hear him attempt to tackle other tough questions, and I was pleased to see him reaching out to the community, especially involving high school students, in such a down-to-earth accessible manner.
However, I have to say I wasn't completely satisfied with his answer.
He made many points (which I've paraphrased below.)
1) The 2001 and 2002 assessments were performed very poorly.
I have no idea why there were back-to-back re-assessments in this county. That was before my time. Clearly, there is absolutely no need to waste tax-payers money re-assessing every single year. I'd be perfectly happy with a planned 3-4 year cycle of re-assessments.
2) The city spent a lot of money and time on appeals relating to the 2001-2 re-assessments.
If those re-assessments were performed so poorly, then the team should be fired, and a new re-assessment team should be hired. If 180,000 people filed appeals, that's a broken re-assessment system.
3) He canceled the 2006 re-assessment (which he is proud of.)
Let me share a story. While I was living in Connecticut, the state found that the emissions testers were corrupt. They temporarily canceled all emissions testing in the state while they attempted to create a new clean system. Then a few years later, they re-started emissions testing with the new system in place.
If Dan Onorato were in charge of emissions testing in Connecticut, his analogous response would have been to cancel emissions testing forever because the particular system wasn't working. He would defend this stance for the rest of his term by pointing to how corrupt the old system was.
4) He said that 85% of property values increased when properties were re-assessed.
Let's get something straight. Housing prices (in a normal society) increase. It's perfectly natural and expected that prices will increase. In fact, if housing prices didn't increase we'd be in trouble. HOWEVER, the increased value of an assessed house SHOULD NOT mean increased property tax. When values go up, the county or the city or whomever, SHOULD adjust the mill rate DOWN so that the net result for them is about the same. Is there a law against that in Harrisburg???
He said: "County school districts and the municipalities all base their property taxes off the assessed values". If these school districts and municipalities refuse to lower their mill rate, then they are ripping off their citizens. That is where the offense should be - not the ridiculous stance of pretending property values haven't changed in 40 years.
5) Other counties around us follow the base-year assessment strategy.
In summation, Dan says all the other counties are refusing to fix the system, so why should he?
If all the other counties can break the law and propagate inequity, why can't he?
Dan, stop whining and do something about this unfair setup. That's how you'll prove you're capable of being governor.
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4 comments:
I also found the cyber town hall meting to be interesting and was pleased to see "Dan-O" sincerely trying to be a normal guy who you can actually talk to about our issues.
Were all of his answers what we wanted to hear...clearly not. However, it seems that he did his best to give "his" own answers. I just wonder if all of this is simply setting the stage for his own personal preparations for governor.
Side-note: If he does indeed run for governor and wins, does that mean we can finally look forward to an increased presence (importance) in the capitol?
"Let's get something straight. Housing prices (in a normal society) increase. It's perfectly natural and expected that prices will increase. In fact, if housing prices didn't increase we'd be in trouble. HOWEVER, the increased value of an assessed house SHOULD NOT mean increased property tax. When values go up, the county or the city or whomever, SHOULD adjust the mill rate DOWN so that the net result for them is about the same."
THANK YOU think confused the heck out of me also. Since he said explicitly that he wanted to "correct some misinformation that is out there", I sort of perked up like, "Huh? Who's spreading the information, Kemo Sabe?", but I'm still not sure that I have my facts straight enought to call him out.
I will add that I was impressed that he was able to answer all those questions in rapid fire and at least sound good. When is the Steelerstahl cyber town hall coming up?
We should mention that the County was sued, and Judge Stanton Wettick threw out the County's "base year" assessment system in June of 2007. The question is how often assessments are done by Allegheny, and every other county in the state. Since assessments cost a lot of money, this is a big deal, for Allegheny and other counties, and thus for Onorato's gubernatorial aspirations. The case has made it up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, who are due to rule fairly soon on the case. Onorato has been waiting to act on assessments to see a) what the court say or b) if the legislature acts. So Onorato has a lot of reason to duck assessment questions, and there's not much upside for him to take action now. Onorato would rather wait so that he can blame the court or State Legislature, and Onorato certainly doesn't want to set up some assessment system only to have it overturned by the court.
Reducing millage rates is difficult, you have to get a legislative body to meet and agree to risk reducing its revenue. So, yeah, the school districts are likely not to want to reduce millage rates, no matter how popular it would be with voters. But I have to say, some of our neighboring counties apparently have not reassessed for twenty years or so, so who knows what will happen if they are forced to.
You definitely make some good points, Ed. Unfortunately, Mr Onorato didn't make those points.
We're definitely in limbo waiting for the courts to decide here and hopefully that happens as quickly as possible.
As to the millage rates, I'm just confused. In Connecticut, the city decided what the millage rate would be BASED ON the actual results of the assessments. Having property tax on cars almost made this a necessity. There was no risk involved for the city. They just figured out how much they needed. They figured out the value of property in the city. And they determined the millage rate accordingly. It can be that simple.
And here's a simple justification for revaluation:
http://www.norwalkct.org/reval2008/asrfaq38.htm
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