A judge ruled today that Allegheny County's attempts to stick with 2002 property assessments are legal, meaning homeowners may not see value changes for years to come.

In a decision involving lawsuits filed last year, Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. said state law allows all of Pennsylvania's 67 counties to choose between doing regular reassessments or creating a "base year."

In October, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and County Council took the second option, establishing the year of the county's last full reassessment, 2002, as a base. They argued that new values in 2006 would have led to significant increases for many property owners and possibly huge tax hikes if school districts and municipalities didn't lower their millage rates.

Two groups of homeowners then sued the county over the base year. They argued that the new system resembles an assessment freeze, unfairly penalizing property owners with decreasing or stagnant assessment values and giving tax breaks to property owners with rising values.

Judge Wettick's decision acknowledges the legitimacy of those concerns, but the county, he said, is within its legal rights.

"While a county that uses current market value to arrive at actual value cannot freeze assessment values, it can achieve almost the same result by using a base year market value," he said. "I recognize that this may be viewed as form over substance. However, this is what the state assessment law permits."

Lawyers for the plaintiffs are reviewing the decision.

Judge Wettick gave the plaintiffs 30 days to file complaints that challenge the constitutionality of the state's base year law.

He scheduled a status conference for March 27.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.