Pennsylvania House Republican Whip Mike Turzai predicted yesterday that the state will take major steps to reform the property assessment system by 2011.

After a Republican House Policy Committee hearing on possible changes in Richland, Mr. Turzai said assessment problems in Allegheny County and others has created an opportunity for "bold change" in Harrisburg.

But reform won't come easy, and it most certainly will have to wait until 2011, when Harrisburg will have undergone a change of government in various offices, most of all, in the governor's office, said Mr. Turzai, R-Bradford Woods.

"There is a lot of [Gov. Ed] Rendell fatigue in Harrisburg and people just want to ride Rendell out. I think a new governor will have an opportunity to be bold," Mr. Turzai said, including moving to overhaul the system of property assessment in Pennsylvania.

Assessments became a statewide issue earlier this year when the state Supreme Court ruled that Allegheny County's system of linking values to a base year (2002) was unfair because it didn't recognize decreasing values in poor communities and increasing values in rich communities. Since many counties use a similar system, the state Legislature agreed to review the issue.

To that end, the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, a General Assembly research arm, is studying Pennsylvania's assessment system and also looking at how assessments are handled in Maryland and other states that have a statewide property assessment office.

At yesterday's hearing, a group of advocates who favor consistent property reassessments told the 10-member Republican policy group that the fundamental weakness of the assessment system in Pennsylvania is a lack of state oversight, political will and public education or trust in the efficacy of consistent reassessments.

Testifying before the committee were Douglas Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania; Eric Montarti, a policy analyst of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy; and Robert Junker, one of the attorneys who sued Allegheny County because of its inequitable assessment system.

Any state-level fix of the assessment system should start with education of the public, said another witness, Dominick Gambino, a former manager of Allegheny County's Office of Property Assessment.

Property owners need to know, he said, "what an assessment is, what it does and how it affects property owners."

The state House, Mr. Gambino continued, should take a lead role in not only implementing a state-run system of property assessment, but in dispelling the myth that a property reassessment automatically leads to a property tax increase.

As part of any reassessment, he said, property owners ought to know that, "if you should pay more [in property taxes] you do pay more." But high assessments should lead to a lower tax rate so the municipal governments don't receive a windfall of revenue.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out Allegheny County's base-year assessment system, declaring it unconstitutional because it violated the uniformity clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

And now, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr., following an Oct. 19 hearing, is in the process of determining how and when the county must conduct a new property assessment.

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